Steven A. Juliano 
Distinguished Professor of Ecology 
Last update March 2013                              

RESEARCH INTERESTS                                                                          
My research concerns behavioral, population, and community ecology of insects, and the ways in which these different levels of organization within ecology are linked. Currently most of my work is on invasion ecology of container dwelling mosquitoes.  All of my research has featured a major role for post doctoral researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students.

RECENT AWARDS WON BY MY GRADUATE STUDENTS

Two of my recent graduate students, Ebony Murrell (PhD 2012) and Joe Fader (MS 2011), have won awards for best presentation at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America.  Ebony Murrell also won the ISU Sorensen award for best dissertation. For more on these awards, click here.

One project involves community processes including competition and predation among container mosquitoes in the midwest.  This project is funded by a National Institutes of Health grant.  Under a previous NIH grant we investigated how the presence of multiple competing species in containers affects invasion success and impact of another invasive mosquito, Aedes japonicus in the St. Louis, MO area.  This project documented the processes leading to turnover of species in these communities.  More recently, we have embarked on a project testing the contributions of water body size, permanence, and predator abundance as determinants of community organization in these communities.  Besides addressing general hypotheses about community level interactions, these projects concern factors that affect important vectors or arboviruses; hence there is both basic and practical significance to this work.  This work takes place at the Tyson Research  Center, Washington University.

Another completed project involves a collaboration with Dr. Sabine Loew, population geneticist, now at St. Mary's University, Maryland.  We used molecular markers (mtDNA, microsatellites) to trace dispersal and population history of the Yellow Fever mosquito in Florida. 

Some of my past research has involved invasion ecology of Asian tiger mosquito  and was funded by a National Institutes of Health grant, in which I collaborated with colleagues at Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, University of Florida.  We also have a related international project on this invasive species in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in collaboration with Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.

In the recent past, I have been part of an NSF-funded Cross-disciplinary Research at Undergraduate Institutions (CRUI) project on life history phenotypes of insects, using grasshoppers as a model organism. A summary of past research in my lab on our CRUI project is here.  This project involves undergraduates exclusively, and is funded by a National Science Foundation grant for Collaborative Research at Undergraduate Institutions. 

In addition to these research projects, I have a long standing interest in biostatistics, which has led to my involvement in research on application of statistical techniques to a variety of biological problems. I am also one of the faculty directing the Program of Excellence in Biomathematics at ISU, which is a collaborative MS degree program involving the School of Biological Sciences and Department of Mathematics.

David W. Borst Memorial Fund
This scholarship fund was established as a memorial to my late colleague Dave Borst.
It provides an annual scholarship for an academically outstanding undergraduate student pursuing research in Biological Sciences.

To make a donation, follow the link above, then click:
"Click here to choose the designation(s) for your gift"
Then from the "Fund designation tree" choose:
    College of Arts & Sciences
        Biological Sciences
            Scholarships
                Dr. David W. Borst, Jr. Memorial Restricted Fund

You can also find out more about this scholarship fund at:  http://www.bio.illinoisstate.edu/giving/scholarships.shtml

I am also a charter member of the National Center for
Science Education's Project Steve. 
Click on the image at left to learn more.