This award will establish a Research Training Group in Linking Levels of Ecological Organization at the Kellogg Biological Station of Michigan State University. The faculty group has 11 members drawn from 5 departments. The funds awarded will provide stipends for graduate students and postdoctoral trainees, will support research participation by undergraduate students, and will defray part of the cost of the trainees' research. In addition, funds will be used to purchase specialized research equipment to be used by the trainees, for trainee travel to other institutions for specialized training not available at Michigan State, and to bring investigators from other research and academic institutions to the Kellogg Station for seminars and workshops. University and other resources will augment the funds provided by NSF in most of these categories, and will help extend the program to include the participation of high school students. The need to train scientists who can synthesize across levels of ecological organization is significant and growing. If anything, the pressing issues of global change and of maintenance of biological diversity appear to make such training increasingly urgent. This program will provide just such training, taking advantage of the techniques and concepts of researchers who address a variety of evolutionary and ecological problems at the level of genes, individual organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems or entire landscapes.
