We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 Arboretum Research Fellowships. These graduate fellowships support early career scientists doing work that aligns with our mission and advances a long tradition of research in restoration ecology and conservation. The Arboretum also fosters connections among the Fellows and with the broader community.

A two-year Leopold Research Fellowship was awarded to Wyatt Cummings. Research Fellowships for one year of support were awarded to Hannah Ashe, Jasmine Groves, Shaneya Miriyagalla, and Jillian Neece. Read on to learn more about the Fellows and their research.

Wyatt Cummings

PhD student, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, UW–Madison

My research focuses on the seasonal dynamics of Wisconsin’s bird and mammal communities. Many native forests in our region have high densities of invasive shrubs like buckthorn and honeysuckle, which impact native plant communities. There are still uncertainties about how these shrubs affect native wildlife, so I’m excited to use acoustic monitoring in the Arboretum’s Lost City Forest restoration project to better understand how removing these invasive shrubs affects the birds that call the Arboretum home across the seasons.

Advisors: Dr. Benjamin Zuckerberg and Dr. Zuzana Buřivalová
Project: Understory restoration and forest phenology: Exploring the effects of invasive shrub removal on bird communities and soundscapes

Hannah Ashe

PhD student, Integrative Biology, Department of Biology, UW–Madison

At the Arboretum, I will examine how removing invasive shrubs affects the behavior and activity of small mammals, deer, and ticks, so that we may learn how the risk of Lyme disease varies across locations following restoration. I am very excited to work in a space that not only unites my interests in ecology, restoration, and public health, but also provides many opportunities to communicate my research with people who are directly affected by invasive shrubs and Lyme disease.

Advisor: Dr. John Orrock
Project: The shadow of disease risk: Examining spatial heterogeneity in the behavior and abundance of the hosts and vectors of Lyme disease following invasive shrub removal

Jasmine Groves

PhD student, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, UW–Madison

My dissertation will focus on how anthropogenic influences (human-caused contamination, disturbance, and growing urbanization) affect the biodiversity of macroinvertebrates, vertebrates, and their parasites in freshwater ecosystems. I will conduct ecological surveys at around forty ponds in Dane County, Wisconsin, that vary in degree of urbanization, to learn if we can infer whether a pond’s diversity of parasites and amphibians is affected by urban expansion.

Advisor: Dr. Jasmine Childress
Project: Caught between two stressors: How pollution and parasites interact with hosts across an entire life cycle

Shaneya Miriyagalla

PhD student, Department of Botany, UW–Madison

My research focuses on how soil microfungal diversity has changed across Wisconsin habitats such as sandbars, forests, and prairies, over the past fifty years in response to global environmental change. Using a rare historical dataset collected by mycologists in Wisconsin as a baseline, I am resampling the same sites to compare past and present microfungal communities. My work combines traditional methods of culturing soil fungi in a nutrient rich agar medium with modern sequencing techniques to better understand long-term shifts in fungal diversity.

Advisor: Dr. Anne Pringle
Project: Comparing historical records and modern data to assess fifty years of change in Wisconsin soil microfungal communities (emphasis on Aspergillus and Penicillium) across different habitats

Jillian Neece

PhD student, Integrative Biology, Department of Biology, UW–Madison

I am broadly interested in “how?” and “why?” questions related to plants and their interactions with the environment. My current project investigates how population declines of large bumble bees might affect milkweed seed production. Milkweed seeds are critical for restoring monarch butterfly habitat, but seed production can vary greatly from year to year. My research seeks to answer why we see this variability in seed production, and how milkweeds may be impacted if their pollinators (like large bumble bees) continue to decline.

Advisor: Dr. Monica Turner
Project: Controls on pollination and seed-set in milkweeds