MCCARY LAB - Lab News

10/7/2026

September 2026 News

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On September 1st, a paper on which Saheed is a coauthor was published in New Phytologist. This paper leverages the newly established UNDERPLOT database to identify the third functional axis, in the belowground functional trait space, represented by clonality and bud banks. It was shown that belowground persistence traits are pivotal to plant survival and regeneration, offering a broader framework for predicting ecosystem stability under environmental change. The paper can be found here. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.71544
On September 18th, Brooke and Iliana ran two consecutive moth night events at Rice’s South Campus research field, focused on using a blacklight and white sheet to attract nighttime insects for viewing. As an activity chair of the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology department’s GSA, Brooke helped to organize, set up and run the first event, at which numerous grad students enjoyed food and refreshments and watched for arriving insects. After this, Iliana, who recently became an iNaturalist ambassador, worked with Matt to bring a group of undergraduates to the site and teach them how to make iNaturalist observations of the insects arriving to the sheet.
Matt and a collaborator of his, Cesar Uribe, have received great news regarding some proposed work focused on usage of AI in ecology research. They were competitively selected to organize a working group funded by the Forest Invasion Synthesis Centre, focused on “leveraging global datasets and artificial intelligence to predict forest invasions.” They will assemble a team of global experts to synthesize trait and ecosystem data on pines and use AI to develop a predictive model of pine invasions globally, and will additionally organize two 5-day workshops in Prague (2027 and 2028) focused on this work. Additionally, they received $40K to start a working group at Rice called AI for Ecology, which will bring together statisticians, engineers, and biologists at Rice to explore emerging AI tools for tackling ecological questions.

9/18/2026

August 2026 News

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On August 15th, Annie received the Rice Biosciences Graduate Student Outstanding Publication Award for her first dissertation chapter published in Ecology Letters, Food Web Similarity Increases With Productivity Similarity at a Continental Scale. See paper here.
Annie also had photos from her camera traps in Costa Rica, part of her second dissertation chapter, published in a new book, Costa Rica's Rainforests by Scott Wesley Shumway. See an image of a jaguar below!
On August 21st, the Biosciences department held its annual Welcome Symposium for new students. Amoi was one of the primary speakers, delivering a talk on their belowground plant trait research. Iliana also presented a poster, Keep Calm And McCary On, during the afternoon poster session.
As of August 24th, two new undergraduate assistants, Gracie Lee and Alara Seeborg, have joined the lab. They will spend this semester primarily assisting Annie with identifying thousands of invertebrates from her soil samples taken in Tanzania last year.
On August 25th, after much preparation, the first round of live ticks (100 in total) for Modeline’s third chapter project was delivered to the lab! They were used for a preliminary experiment to test whether ticks can successfully survive in Modeline’s controlled microcosms in the incubator. We are now awaiting 750 more to be delivered in late September for the beginning of the true experiments.
As of August 26th, a new paper on which Matt is a coauthor has been published in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. It is titled Growing an Inclusive Ecological Professional Society for a Diverse Environmental Workforce: Wisdom Gained to Navigate Current and Future DEIJ Challenges, and it highlights the work of the Black Ecologists section and others who have improved diversity initiatives at the Ecological Society of America. This paper can be found here.
Saheed is also coauthor on a new publication this month, titled A global dataset of key traits for plant belowground functioning, published August 29th in Scientific Data. This paper introduces the UNDERground Plant Organ Trait (UNDERPLOT) database, a global dataset unfrying fine-root, rooting depth, clonality, and bud bank traits to advance comprehensive analyses of belowground functional diversity. It can be found here.

8/13/2026

July 2026 News

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On July 16th, Iliana gave a talk at Axelrad beer garden, the first in what is planned to be an ongoing, monthly series of educational talks by local researchers. Titled “Notable Feats in the World of Bug Sex,” the talk whimsically covered interesting and unusual mating behaviors found in the insect world.
Matt McCary, Saheed Jimoh, Amoi Campbell, and Annie Finneran attended this year’s Entomological Society of America meeting in Salt Lake City from July 26th-31st. Matt organized a session to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Black Ecologist Section, featuring a presentation on the Section’s history and a panel discussion. Saheed, Amoi and Annie all delivered oral presentations on their current research projects.
On July 31st, Amoi Campbell’s first PhD thesis chapter was published as a review paper in Ecology and Evolution, titled “From The Ground Up: Can Root Traits Help Understand Invasion Dynamics?” The paper can be accessed here.
Also on July 31st, undergraduates Noemi Torres-Zazueta and Nadia Jett presented posters on their summer research projects at the Rice Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium. This was both of their first times creating and presenting academic posters, and we are proud of both of their work.
Finally, at long last, the lengthy and labor-intensive process of filling our many large mesocosm tubs with soil mix has been completed! We can now focus on installing native plant communities within these tubs, which will create a foundation for numerous experimental treatments and analyses next year.

6/8/2026

May 2026 News

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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.

5/5/2026

April 2026 News

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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.

4/7/2026

March 2026 News

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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).

3/2/2026

February 2026 News

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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.

1/30/2026

January 2026 News

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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.