<![CDATA[MCCARY LAB - Lab News]]>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 22:32:11 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[May 2026 News]]>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:58:29 GMThttps://www.mattmccary.com/lab-news/may-2026-news
  • This month, we celebrate the college graduations of two of our lab members! Maryam Enteshari has earned her bachelor’s in business, and Luis Muniz has earned his bachelor’s in electrical engineering.
  • We also welcome two new lab members, undergraduates Noemi Torres-Zazueta and Nadia Jett. They are already working hard on our NSF project work, our rhizobox project, and more, and we are very happy to have them.
  • The construction of the outdoor research garden for our NSF-funded project  is very much in the works! We have been hard at work prepping the space and materials, and in June we will begin moving our seedlings from the greenhouse to the outdoor garden space.
]]><![CDATA[April 2026 News]]>Tue, 05 May 2026 20:33:07 GMThttps://www.mattmccary.com/lab-news/april-2026-news
  • Brooke Beardshall participated in the First-Year Graduate Student Symposium on April 10th, where she presented her research titled “Challenges of Predicting Pine Invasions in South America: Opportunities for AI-Based Approaches.” Her presentation explored the modeling difficulties involved in forecasting the spread of invasive pine species across South America, and the promising role of AI in addressing these global environmental challenges. 
  • In addition to the above, Brooke received an Honorable Mention from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).
  • Alex Jiménez-Martin attended the 4th Global Soil Biodiversity Conference in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada from April 12th-15th. There, she learned about interesting new research on soil ecology, and tuned in to experts discussing challenges we face when studying soil biodiversity and how to share our knowledge with local communities. She also presented her poster on how female and male plants of Ilex vomitoria differ in soil communities. 
  • On April 18th, Saheed Jimoh joined a team of volunteers to judge undergraduate poster presentations at the Natural Science Undergraduate Research Symposium (NSURS) at the BRC. It was an inspiring experience to step away from plant ecological research and evaluate the brilliant and emerging researchers at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. He walked away with new insights into fields beyond his research niche, appreciating the interdisciplinary nature of science.
  • Iliana Moore attended the 2026 Lab Manager Leadership summit in Phoenix, Arizona from April 20th-22nd. There, she attended workshops and talks focused on lab safety advances, leadership approaches, improving collaboration and communication, and more—knowledge and skills that will be applied to the McCary lab’s current projects. She also networked with a wide variety of lab leaders and staff from both academia and industry. 
]]><![CDATA[March 2026 News]]>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 20:18:40 GMThttps://www.mattmccary.com/lab-news/march-2026-news
  • On March 20th, Annie Finneran’s paper based on the first chapter of her dissertation, titled “Food Web Similarity Increases With Productivity Similarity at a Continental Scale,” was published online in Ecology Letters (link). This work was also highlighted in a Rice News article published April 6th (link).
  • On March 28th, Iliana, Annie, Liza, Modeline, Saheed and Alex hosted an exhibition table at Reach For The Stars STEM Festival, an outreach event focused on introducing middle schools girls to STEM research and inspiring them to pursue science. The table featured mites, springtails and ants under the microscope, a live springtail terrarium, a springtail-building activity, a guess-how-many-organisms-in-the-jar activity, and stickers designed by Liza. The event was a hit, with hundreds of children and parents attending, and our table garnered a lot of interest!
  • Also on March 28th, Matt McCary co-authored a new publication in Urban Ecosystems, titled “Management matters: homogenized plant-soil linkages constrain carbon cycling in urban green spaces” (link). 
]]><![CDATA[February 2026 News]]>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:52:49 GMThttps://www.mattmccary.com/lab-news/february-2026-news
  • On February 24-25, Alex Bradley Jiménez-Martin conducted her second round of field data collection from her leaf litter bag project, with help from other lab members and Rice students. In total, 240 bags were collected from the bases of 80 trees across 2 sites. These litter bags, which have been on the ground at these sites for a full year, will be analyzed for decomposition and microbial and invertebrate communities.
  • Annie Finneran's first chapter of her dissertation was accepted for publication in Ecology Letters! Be on the lookout for the article, titled Food web similarity increases with productivity similarity at a continental scale.
  • Matt McCary’s recent manuscript submission, titled Aquatic resource subsidies are more important than invasive lupine for ground-dwelling arthropod communities around Lake Mývatn, was accepted to Aquatic Ecology, and will be available online soon. This study found that invasion was less important in the context of resource addition for ground-dwelling arthropods in Iceland.
  • Saheed Jimoh co-facilitated a workshop for the Ecological Society of America titled “Introduction to Sparse Modeling,” alongside Amy Patterson (University of Wyoming & University of Maryland) and Christa Torrens (Flathead Lake Biological Station). The workshops taught participants how to approach and use sparse modeling techniques, including interpreting fitted models and generating SuSie and lasso scripts in R. This workshop, which is available upon request, is supported by the Modelscapes Consortium comprising the University of Wyoming, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Montana.
]]><![CDATA[January 2026 News]]>Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattmccary.com/lab-news/test
  • On January 5th, Amoi Campbell was one of two Rice students who received the 2025 GSS Best Presentation Award, as chosen by a panel of EEB faculty. Their presentation, titled “In my Context Dependent Era: How Belowground Traits Outperform Aboveground Traits in an Invaded Grassland Community,” was noted as demonstrating “ability to engage a broad scientific audience while maintaining strong disciplinary depth, clear conceptual framing, and effective communication of research ideas, along with clear growth in both research development and presentation skills.”
  • Saheed Jimoh co-authored two new publications focused on soil carbon in grassland ecosystems. The first, titled “Resistance of shallow soil carbon to both short-term isolated and recurrent droughts in two semi-arid grasslands,” was published in Oecologia on January 7th. The second, titled “The global extent of the grassland biome and implications for the terrestrial carbon sink,” was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on January 27th. Publication links:     1      2 
  • Brooke Beardshall, along with other first-year EEB students, hosted an outreach booth at Bunker Hill Elementary’s Science Night on January 27th. The booth was designed to show kids how broad science can be and what it might mean to be a scientist. They walked students through the full scientific process, from collecting data in the field to bringing samples back to the lab for processing and cleaning, then analyzing the data to make scientific inferences.  
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