Volume 27 · Number 3 · Spring 2010
Jay Stachowicz (Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
Giving: Protecting Marine Biodiversity
As a kid growing up on the east coast, Jay Stachowicz loved exploring tide pools and watching the diversity of life in such a small ecosystem. Now as a professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, Stachowicz studies the importance of biodiversity in California coastal ecosystems from kelp forests to tide pools to sea grass beds.
“Communities with a diversity of organisms can respond better to environmental change than those without diversity,” he says. “It’s like a biological insurance policy against a changing environment.”
Stachowicz received a Chancellor’s Fellow Award in 2006, which he used to hire a recent UC Davis graduate for a year to extend an ongoing study of the effect of species loss in intertidal communities. They found much stronger effects of diversity in the longer-term study than had previously been discovered, which in turn enabled Stachowicz to garner a four-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue the research. Some of the results have been crucial in demonstrating the importance of establishing protected marine areas off California’s coast.
“The unrestricted funds from this award allowed me to take research risks that are harder to fund through more traditional channels. It also made me feel valued by the university in a very tangible way — for that I am thankful.”