RaMP: Understanding Nature and Los Angeles Biodiversity (UNLAB) through Museum Collections and Field-based Research

The postbaccalaureate mentoring program Understanding Nature and Los Angeles Biodiversity through Museum Collections and Field-based Research (UNLAB) will facilitate biodiversity research, mentorship, professional development, and educational enrichment for mentees. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County will host and mentor UNLAB mentees in research projects focused on Southern California biodiversity in the context of a changing planet.

Research will investigate this theme within three related tracks: biodiversity before humans; biodiversity introduced, removed, or geographically changed by humans; and biodiversity responses to humans. Projects will include modern species and fossils, those on land and in the ocean, and both animals and plants, providing broad-ranging insights and varied experiences for mentees.

Results from mentees' guided research will have implications for local conservation and management as well as for understanding how humans shape biodiversity more broadly. Mentors and UNLAB’s extended network of professionals at the Natural History Museum and throughout the greater Los Angeles area will foster mentee confidence and competence in a number of different STEM career opportunities.

Basing UNLAB in a public museum setting will allow mentees to develop a broad range of scientific and communication skills that they can apply to continuing their formal education or the career of their choice.

A comprehensive understanding of the consequences of anthropogenic change on Earth’s biodiversity requires research that spans paleontological, historical, and modern timescales. UNLAB mentee research projects are taxonomically diverse, collections-based, and purposefully varied. They address biotic responses to anthropogenic disturbances using genetics and genomics, morphometrics, community science as well as behavioral, morphological, faunal, and spatial analyses.

Research outcomes are relevant to land use decisions as well as to understanding the phenomena of biotic homogenization and species introduction, floral and faunal community change, extinction, species fragmentation, and urban evolution. The variety and interconnected nature of UNLAB mentee projects will allow for within-cohort collaboration and broadly relevant results.

UNLAB will provide mentorship under an inclusion, diversity, equity, and access framework, and will keenly focus on developing professional skills that complement traditionally emphasized research skills. Thus, UNLAB and its theme of biodiversity in a time of anthropogenic change will prepare mentees - as scientists, analysts, and educators - for a STEM workforce that must contend with the consequences of a changing planet.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.