Quick Looks
University Science Highlights From the Past Year
It was the culmination of a decades-long goal for UM, and the surge has only gained momentum in the first six months of the 2022–23 fiscal year.
During the past decade, expenditures from research grants have more than doubled at the University. This past fall reported research expenditures were a record $126 million, up $4 million from the year before. UM experienced a 129% increase from the $55 million reported in 2014.
Scott Whittenburg, UM vice president for research and creative scholarship, was a chief architect of the University’s bid to earn R1 status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Only about 3.7% of degree-granting institutions across the U.S. earn the designation. Of the 146 R1 universities, UM ranks №9 for research growth since 2014.
Whittenburg says the amount of new external funding received by UM in the first six months of this fiscal year is up 18% over where it was a year ago. The award volume stands at $99 million, compared to $84 million at this time last year.
“So our trajectory looks strong — poised for another record,” he says. “We expect this trend to continue for the next several years as our research awards continue to reach new heights.”
The number of research proposals submitted in the first six months is about even, 260 this year compared to 263 a year ago. However, the amount of external funding requested, also called the proposal volume, is $151 million this year compared to $123 million last year.
Three Most Cited UM Journal Articles from 2022
“National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic” by Alex Metcalf, associate professor, Department of Society and Conservation (Nature Communications; 52 citations)
“Complete genomic and epigenetic maps of human centromeres” by Daniel Olson, Ph.D. student, Department of Computer Sciences (Science; 38 citations)
“Mechanisms of woody-plant mortality under rising drought, CO2 and vapour pressure deficit” by Anna Sala, professor, Division of Biological Sciences (Nature Reviews Earth & Environment; 30 citations)
Research Shows Parasite May Create Risk-Taking Wolves in Yellowstone
New research from a UM student and his partners suggests that a common parasite associated with cats turns Yellowstone National Park wolves into risk takers, who when infected are much more likely to disperse across the landscape and become pack leaders.
The story caught fire with media outlets worldwide, with both CNN and NPR picking it up. The research originally was published in the journal Communications Biology.
“I’ve been blown away by it,” says Connor Meyer, a wildlife biology doctoral student in UM’s Ungulate Ecology Lab, part of the W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation. “I’m surprised and grateful, but it’s been a bit of a nerve-wracking experience with all the attention.”
Meyer and his team created the story sensation by studying a single-celled creature named Toxoplasma gondii — often nicknamed the “mind-control parasite.” It prefers to live in felines, and infected cats spread spore-packed oocysts in their feces. T. gondii — which Meyer calls “toxo” for short — is the reason pregnant people aren’t supposed to clean the litterbox. Human immune systems usually keep it in check, but the parasite causes sickness that can be dangerous to fetuses, as well as those who are immunocompromised, such as HIV/AIDS patients.
Meyer and his fellow lead author, Yellowstone park biologist Kira Cassidy, started a study of the prevalence of T. gondii among park wolves in spring 2021. They discovered a toxo-positive wolf becomes more of a risk taker — 11 times more likely to disperse from its original pack and 46 times more likely to become a pack leader.
Yellowstone wolves are among the most studied animals in the world. Since they were reintroduced in 1995, park managers have taken blood samples every time a wolf is captured and collared. Meyer and his team wound up testing blood from 243 wolves for toxo antibodies with assistance from a Cornell University diagnostics lab. They also used data from long-term and ongoing Yellowstone Wolf Project research. More than 27% of the wolves they looked at — about 74 individuals all told — were infected with T. gondii.
The researchers first suspected wolves were getting infected by eating elk, their chief prey. But when they tested more than 100 elk, none were positive for the parasite.
“Eventually we found the most significant predictor of infection with wolves was when their range overlapped areas with high mountain lion density,” Meyer says. “So, with no elk testing positive, we hypothesized they were getting infected directly by cougars.”
Yellowstone wolves can slay and eat mountain lions, but there only have been 10 or so documented cases of that since 1995. Meyer says it’s more likely wolves they get toxo infection by nosing around “scrape sites,” where cougars defecate and mark their territory.
“We also have a litter box theory,” he says. “Almost anyone who has a dog and cat at home knows that, if the dog gets an opportunity, they are going to raid the litter box. We don’t have direct evidence of wolves eating mountain lion scat, but we have lots of photos of wolves at mountain lion scrapes. Wolves eat lots of things, so we don’t think it’s much of a stretch.”
Study: ‘Yellowstone’ Series Brings 2.1M Visitors, $750M in Spending to Montana
Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone,” TV’s most popular series, has sparked the interest of a worldwide audience, bringing an estimated 2.1 million visitors and $730 million in spending to Montana in 2021, according to a new UM study.
Conducted by UM’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research and UM’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research, the study found that the TV show has been a significant factor in marketing Montana. Centered on the fictional Dutton family ranch, “Yellowstone” is largely filmed in Darby, Hamilton, Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley, and it treated more than 12 million viewers to the scenery of Montana during its season-five premiere.
A 2022 study conducted by BBER found “Yellowstone” contributed significantly to the state’s economy, but when the more recent study was extended to include the impact of visitor spending, these effects changed dramatically, according to Patrick Barkey, director of BBER.
“Extending our previous analysis to include the impacts of tourism spending was eye-opening,” Barkey says.
Among its results, the study found that the combination of visitor spending and film production spending associated with the production of “Yellowstone” in Montana resulted in:
• $730.1 million in spending to the state’s economy.
• $44.5 million in state tax revenues directed in whole or in part to the general fund.
• 2.1 million visitors to Montana in 2021 whose decision to visit was the result of the show.
Prentiss Named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Anna Prentiss has made a career out of sifting through layers of history to reveal the daily lives of ancient people. Her efforts have led to layers of accolades.
The UM archaeologist and anthropologist already holds the rank of Regents Professor — the top professor rank awarded
by the Montana University System — and she was only the fourth Montanan ever elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Previous members of the academy, founded in 1780, include Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr. The prestigious organization is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center that convenes leaders to address significant challenges.
“I’m honored and humbled to have my life’s work honored in this way,” Prentiss says. “I think this is another indicator that the research and scholarship at UM has impacts far beyond the borders of Montana. We can compete with anyone in the world.”
Other Montana scholars elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences include UM’s Fred Allendorf and Doug Emlen.
Prentiss earned her archaeology doctorate from Simon Fraser University in 1993. She joined the UM faculty in 1995 and became a full professor in 2009. The state Board of Regents approved her promotion to Regents Professor of Anthropology in 2018.
Her research interests include hunter-gatherers, village societies, ancient technology, evolutionary theory, and the method and theory of archaeology.
Her fieldwork has taken her and the scores of UM students she has mentored around globe, from British Columbia and Alaska to Patagonia. She also served as a visiting scholar in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, England.
Prentiss has written and co-authored eight books, including 2017’s “The Last House at Bridge River,” which details a comprehensive study of a single-floor aboriginal home in British Columbia during the 19th-century Fur Trade period. She also has written more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, and her list of awards and accomplishments stretches her curriculum vitae to 51 pages.
Prentiss says her robust research agenda was developed as a byproduct of collaborations and partnerships with Canadian First Nations and Montana tribes.
“Dr. Prentiss is strongly deserving of being a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” says Scott Whittenburg, UM vice president for research and creative scholarship. “Her work spans multiple disciplines and includes both research and creative scholarship.”
Elser Earns National Academy of Sciences Honor
Jim Elser became the first person from UM officially inducted into the prestigious National Academy of Sciences last year. He was only the second person to be inducted from Montana.
Elser directs the University’s Flathead Lake Biological Station and serves as the station’s Bierman Professor of Ecology. During his induction ceremony last spring in Washington, D.C., he signed his name in the NAS register, which features the signatures of NAS members dating back to the mid-19th century.
“We are so pleased that the scientific community recognized Professor Elser as one of our country’s most important scientists,” UM President Seth Bodnar says. “The UM family proudly celebrates this well-deserved recognition.”
NAS is a private, nonprofit institution first established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievements in science by election to membership, and provides science, engineering and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.
Elser was elected by current members of the academy in 2019. He has since joined them virtually to advise the nation on matters relating to science, engineering and medicine. His attendance at the induction ceremony marked the first time he has engaged other NAS members face-to-face in an official capacity.
Three UM Researchers Earn Prestigious Early CAREER Awards
In a bumper crop for UM, three University researchers — Brandon Cooper, Lu Hu and Hilary Martens — earned prestigious awards from the National Science Foundations’ Faculty Early Career Development Program. CAREER awards are one of the most prestigious NSF awards, given to promising early career faculty members to provide a foundation for a lifetime of leadership integrating education with research.
Endosymbionts are little critters that actually live inside the cells of other organisms. Cooper, a UM evolutionary geneticist, earned a $1.5 million award to study these organisms — especially how they interact with their hosts and the environment — which could help improve health for a huge swath of the world’s population.
Cooper’s lab works on the most common known endosymbionts in nature, studying how they survive and persist inside the hidden world of a cell’s interior. Specifically, he and his lab members study endosymbiotic Wolbachia bacteria, which infect about half the insects on the planet. When placed inside mosquitoes, Wolbachia variants block arboviruses that cause human diseases such as dengue.
Cooper says the World Health Organization recommends further developing Wolbachia biocontrol efforts like the World Mosquito Program, which aims to protect 500 million people from disease by 2030 by establishing pathogen-blocking Wolbachia in mosquito populations.
“Our work assesses Wolbachia-host interactions in many natural systems to better understand how these bacteria spread and establish,” Cooper says. “Our broader research goal is to understand why Wolbachia are the most common endosymbionts in nature.”
Atmospheric chemist Lu Hu earned his $800,000 CAREER award to take a deep dive into the true nature of the smoke that clouds our Western skies.
He joined UM in 2017, when he and his collaborators immediately embarked on a research project that involved flying a plane through smoke billowing off active wildfires. The plane carried a mass spectrometer instrument to minutely analyze what was in the smoke.
Hu is most interested in volatile organic compounds. VOCs in their gas phase can diffuse, transform and travel. Many can have direct negative impacts on human health. Science has the ability to measure about 150 VOCs in the atmosphere, but there are many more to discover.
“We cannot measure VOCs well,” Hu says. “This project will work to improve our analytical skills — to improve our use of mass spectrometry — to better quantify them. With all our current models, we still cannot predict the formation of ozone when we have wildfire smoke.”
Some VOCs in wildfire smoke are classified as a group of substances called furans, which possibly can be carcinogenic. Furans are produced during combustion processes like power generation and burning fossil fuels. Hu says the lifetime for most furans is about an hour, after which they “react out” and transform into other things that also are potentially harmful.
When the analytics improve, Hu then hopes to update and improve air quality models.
Martens, a geosciences researcher, earned a $700,000 CAREER award. She and her team study the ebb and flow of ocean tides and the massive forces they exert on the Earth due to their weight, which actively changes the shape of our planet. By tracking the daily, centimeter-scale changes in Earth’s shape, the research can provide new information on the internal structure of our planet, with implications for its formation and evolution, as well as surface hazards such as earthquakes.
“This new funding will allow us to advance our models so we can account for regional variations in structure,” says Martens, noting that some regions of South America, for example, are particularly stable thanks to areas called cratons. These cratons resist tectonic forces leading to large earthquakes.
“We are hoping to shed more light on the density of cratons,” Martens says.
She also will use part of her funding to enhance student access to the Griz Shared Computer Cluster, a supercomputer developed for computational processes and models like those that Martens uses in her research.
Seen on Campus
Three Student Grizzlies Earn One of Nation’s Top STEM Awards
When the National Science Foundation announced the awardees and honorable mentions for its 2022 Graduate Research Fellowships Program, the list included two UM students and one alum — all of them women.
The awards are among the most prestigious graduate science recognitions in the country. Students named NSF Graduate Research Fellows are provided five-year fellowships with the NSF, including three years of financial support, an annual stipend of $34,000 and a cost of education allowance of $12,000 to the student’s current institution.
Awards are given to graduate students pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering or math at accredited U.S. institutions.
“UM has had a lot of success attracting GRFP award winners due to the quality of our STEM programs and faculty members, who recruit from a national pool of high-quality graduate student candidates,” says Ashby Kinch, dean of UM’s Graduate School. “We are delighted to see the success of our students as researchers — both the undergraduates who leave here to pursue graduate degrees and then ones who bring their GRFP to UM to pursue their graduate research with our excellent community of faculty and student researchers.”
The NSF named two current UM graduate students and one graduate student at the University of California, Davis, who received her undergraduate degree from UM.
• Allison Monroe studies Indigenous knowledge and environmental sustainability as a graduate student in the Department of Environmental Studies, housed in UM’s College of Humanities and Sciences.
• Grace Erba received her undergraduate degree at UM. She studied wildlife biology and committed to a doctoral program in wildlife biology.
• Emily Leonhardt received her undergraduate degree in 2017 in wildlife biology from UM and now researches life sciences at UC Davis.
Camping Reservations: ‘A Wicked Problem of Equity’
UM Assistant Professor Will Rice is a self-avowed “campground nerd.”
But camping is more than Rice’s avocation: It’s also his vocation, and as a researcher in outdoor recreation and wildland management, he studies the science and art of camping, including how campers actually pick their campsites and the seismic changes taking place in U.S. national parks due to COVID-19.
That research, conducted with colleagues around the country and at the W. A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation, found a park system strained by the exploding popularity of outdoor recreation and struggling to find ways to balance park protection with equitable access to all.
As Rice puts his work: “We are studying people trying to have fun to make sure they, and everyone else, can keep having fun or start having fun, without destroying the things that allow them to have fun.”
Using federal camping data and mobile device location technology — with funding secured from UM’s Center for Population Health Research — Rice and his partners were able to more closely correlate the ethnicity and income of campers with their ability to access campground sites. The research looked at five national park campgrounds across the country that offered campsites both through the park system’s reservation platform, Recreation.gov, and on a first-come, first-served basis.
The analysis found that on average campers accessing sites that require reservations came from areas with significantly higher portions of white residency and higher incomes than those accessing sites not requiring reservations. The reasons for these outcomes are many and are based on everything from technology to workforce dynamics.
“To use these systems you need high-speed internet, which can be a problem for some campers — particularly in remote places like we have in Montana,” he explained. “You also need flexibility to plan your trip for six months from now. People with lower-income jobs often don’t have the ability to set vacations that far in advance.”
Glimpse
UM is leading the charge to expand access to electric vehicle infrastructure in western Montana. The University recently installed four electric vehicle charging stations on campus. The EV stations are funded in part by “Charge Your Ride,” a Montana Department of Environmental Quality program. The new stations signal UM’s effort to support electric vehicle ownership by students and employees.
Dr. Xiong Xiong, a visiting researcher at UM’s Flathead Lake Biological Station, studied microplastics in Montana’s beloved Flathead Lake. His team found Flathead is now home to microplastics, and new microplastic particles are arriving every day. Levels were lower than in lakes in densely populated areas, but similar to or higher than lakes studied in other less-densely populated areas of the world.
FLBS researchers Maite Arroita, Joanna Blaszczak, Alice Carter, Lauren Koenig and Bob Hall also were part of a scientific team that used modern environmental sensor technology to track stream vital signs in near real-time. The new system acts almost like a Fitbit for monitoring the nation’s freshwater ecosystems, allowing researchers to better predict how freshwater vital signs might shift with land development, climate change and other disturbances.
Researchers Ashley Ballantyne and John Kimball published findings in Nature Communications that suggest a strong warming trend in northern regions has increased plant growth, which has offset rising CO2 emissions from thawing permafrost. Kimball says the study shows the need for global Earth-system models that better predict regional responses and feedbacks resulting from climate change.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities named UM as the top academic institution in Montana and among the best in the world. The Univeristy has made the list every year since the world ranking began in 2003. This year, UM ranked between 701 and 800 in the study out of 2,000 universities worldwide, and between 169 and 179 nationally.
Last summer, wildlife researchers at the W. A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation reviewed hunting regulations for all 50 states with a goal of recommending how to simplify and streamline rules often laden with jargon and geography. The team’s work was made possible through a grant from the Council to Advance Hunting and the Shooting Sports.
UM recently secured $5.1 million in federal grants from the Health Resource and Service Administration, leading to the formation of a new UM Office of Health Research & Partnership. The office will use the HRSA funding for programs to bolster the health care workforce and increase access to quality health care in rural and underserved parts of Montana.
