News


Squidtoons: A Science Communication Cartoon Series

It’s 2020 and aquarists just discovered how to breed seadragons in-house: a combination of proper lighting, noise, tank size, and more. 

This finding may not have been a news headliner, but two scientists wanted to get the word out. Garfield Kwan and Dana Song designed a cartoon where one seadragon was complaining about improper date night lighting, too much noise to hear flirting, and a too-small house. 

The duo are the creators of Squidtoons, a comic series designed to make science digestible, fun, and engaging while helping to educate the public about marine biology and the environment.






Finding Hope ‘At Every Depth’

In the prologue for their book At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans, UC Davis scientist Tessa Hill and writer Eric Simons open with an astute observation about humanity’s relationship with the ocean. 

“Even though one-third of the people on the planet live within sixty miles of a coast, the ocean appears as a featureless expanse for most of us; it is an open blue palette separating the places where life happens,” the authors write. “In reality, it is a mosaic as breathtakingly nuanced as the fields and cities and hills and valleys we know on land.”

Read more on lettersandscience.ucdavis.edu






Ocean Acidification Creates Legacy of Stress for Red Abalone

Stressful childhoods can affect an individual’s adult years and influence future generations. Scientists at the University of California, Davis, found a similar pattern holds true for red abalone exposed as babies, and again as adults, to the stress of ocean acidification.

Their study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, found that the negative impacts of ocean acidification ­— a byproduct of carbon dioxide emissions — on red abalone can last within and across generations. Buffering against ocean acidification at crucial life stages can help ease these effects for captive- and commercially raised red abalone, while informing efforts to conserve wild abalone, the study said.

Read more on ucdavis.edu






Renowned Marine Ecologist Jay Stachowicz Wins Teaching Prize

When Professor Jay Stachowicz heard that UC Davis’ chancellor needed to speak to him urgently, he worried he had done something wrong.

In fact, it was quite the opposite: Chancellor Gary S. May informed Stachowicz, of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, that he was the winner of the 2023-24 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, an award honoring faculty for exceptional teaching and scholarship. The donor-funded $60,000 prize, established in 1986 and supported by the UC Davis Foundation, is among the largest of its kind in the country.






Jay Stachowicz named Interim Director of Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute, Succeeds Founding Director Rick Grosberg

Jay Stachowicz, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, has been named the interim director of the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute (CMSI). Stachowicz succeeds the institute’s founding director, Rick Grosberg, a distinguished professor emeritus of evolution and ecology who retired from the university earlier this year.

Longtime colleagues, Stachowicz, who studies the biodiversity and resilience of coastal ecosystems, and Grosberg, a leading researcher on the ways marine invertebrates recognize and interact with one another, share a common passion for fostering community and collaboration in marine sciences.

Read more on biology.ucdavis.edu






Eric Sanford chosen as Naturalist of the Year by the Western Society of Naturalists

Congratulations to Professor Eric Sanford, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology in the College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis, who was recently chosen by the Western Society of Naturalists as their Naturalist of the Year.