Division of Natural Sciences

What does a scientist look like?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:05:47 +0000

What does a scientist look like? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/20/2026 - 17:05

Cody DeBos

In STEM, the stereotypes go beyond gender, asserts PhD candidate Sheba Aikawa

Ask a kindergartner to draw a scientist, and there’s a good chance a male figure will appear below the tip of a crayon. Decades of research have documented this tendency. Its persistence despite strong efforts to increase diversity in STEM fields points to something stubbornly embedded in the way society imagines who belongs in science.

Sheba Aikawa, a sixth-year social psychology PhD candidate in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, wanted to push the established literature further.

“We wanted to understand whether adding race would change how people perceive who ‘fits’ the scientist stereotype,” she says.

Sheba Aikawa is a sixth-year social psychology PhD candidate in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.

The answer, it turns out, is that stereotypes of who “should” be a scientist and how scientists look aren’t limited to gender.

Who fits the mold?

Aikawa’s interest is in exploring ideas of identity, perception and belonging.

“Broadly, my research examines what factors promote welcoming spaces and how negative stereotypes may lead to hostile environments across healthcare, academia and workplace settings,” she says.

Working under Eva Pietri, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, Aikawa’s latest study builds on earlier work establishing that traits associated with scientists are more strongly linked to men than women.

Published in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations and co-authored by graduate student Nadia Floyd and Bernadette Park, professor emerita of psychology and neuroscience, the study asks whether that pattern holds when race is added to the conversation.

“We focused on scientists specifically because we wanted to examine whether the gender bias identified in previous research would hold when considering race. But our findings also have broader implications for understanding STEM bias more generally,” Aikawa says.

Across four experiments involving more than 1,100 white and Black participants, the results were consistent.

What the data reveals

Participants were asked to estimate what percentage of Black men, Black women, white men and white women society views as possessing scientist traits. This includes both positive traits like being analytical or meticulous as well as negative ones like being robotic or unsociable.

Across every study and across both white and Black participant groups, white men were perceived as most likely to possess scientist traits. Aikawa wasn’t surprised by this, but what the data revealed next was more interesting.

“What we found was that Black men and Black women were viewed similarly on scientist-related traits,” Aikawa says. “This suggests that racial stereotypes may be a particularly important factor shaping perceptions of who is seen as belonging in science.”

The gender gap documented in prior research, with men outpacing women in perceived scientific fit, essentially disappeared among Black individuals. Along the same lines, scientific perception of both Black men and Black women was rated lower than white women.

“The finding that race mattered more than gender did not necessarily surprise me,” Aikawa says.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Sheba Aikawa and her colleagues found that although there was no difference between white women and Black men and women on negative scientist traits, study participants rated white women as higher on positive scientist traits than Black men and Black women.

She points to multiple studies from her lab consistently supporting the idea that race plays a “powerful role in shaping perceptions across different contexts, including healthcare.”

“We know there are pervasive stereotypes that portray Black people as less competent, which could affect perceptions of both Black men and Black women,” Aikawa adds.

More than a number

The real-world implications of Aikawa and her team’s findings are huge. Stereotypes and perceptions about who looks like a scientist shape the decisions made by people in positions of power and determine who gets an opportunity to carry out important research or further their education.

“Even people who value diversity may unknowingly hold assumptions about who looks like a scientist or who seems naturally suited for STEM,” Aikawa says. “Awareness does not necessarily mean that people recognize how those beliefs influence their own judgments and behaviors.”

Those biases emerge early, even in children as young as five to six years old, and have persisted across generations. However, she sees signs of societal change moving in the right direction.

“We’re seeing more diverse representations of scientists in children’s media through characters like Doc McStuffins and Ada Twist, Scientist. Increasing visibility of diverse scientists helps broaden children’s understanding of who belongs in STEM.”

She also has a longer outlook.

“I’m optimistic that these perceptions of scientists can change. In fact, I would hope that if someone replicated our studies 100 years from now, they would find very different results.”

And though the findings might appear disheartening at first, Aikawa feels they could be empowering. The feeling of not fitting in, she argues, is not a verdict on a person's potential. By shifting the focus away from individual shortcomings and onto broader societal perceptions, she hopes minorities in STEM see that they do belong.

“The problem is not that Black women are less capable of being scientists; the problem is that society's image of a scientist has historically been narrow and exclusionary,” she says.

Who gets to be a scientist?

For any Black woman who has ever walked into a lab and felt like she didn't quite belong, Aikawa has a message to share.

“If you have ever felt like you don’t fit the stereotypical image of a scientist, that feeling is not simply a reflection of your abilities or potential,” she says. “If you've ever questioned whether you belong in STEM, our findings suggest that those feelings may stem from societal stereotypes rather than from a lack of talent, intelligence or potential.”

In many ways, expanding and redefining what a scientist looks like is exactly how these stereotypes change over time.”

On an individual level, Aikawa also reminds prospective Black scientists that they don’t have to fit society’s mold.

Addressing these stereotypes, though, requires more than individual awareness. Changing perceptions, both internally and societally, takes a collective effort.

Aikawa experienced this firsthand through the Boulder Black Blossoms program at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. Led by Christina Alston, director of the Office of Graduate Access and Retention and faculty affiliate in the School of Education, the program creates a community for Black women in STEM and education graduate programs.

“What I appreciated about this program is that it did not just focus on individual resilience—it focused on creating belonging, connection and support within an academic environment. Those types of structural and community-level supports are critical for helping historically underrepresented groups thrive in STEM,” Aikawa says.

Ultimately, Aikawa sees the work of dismantling harmful stereotypes in STEM as an ongoing, collaborative effort. She says being aware of the stereotypes is an important first step. Increasing diversity in STEM fields and building supportive communities and mentorship networks is equally important.

Over time, she notes, these efforts compound to reshape society’s perspective on who gets to be a scientist.

“In many ways, expanding and redefining what a scientist looks like is exactly how these stereotypes change over time.”

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In STEM, the stereotypes go beyond gender, asserts PhD candidate Sheba Aikawa.

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Top image: scientists Albert Einstein, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, George Washington Carver and Marie Curie

National monuments must be preserved in perpetuity

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:47:26 +0000

National monuments must be preserved in perpetuity Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/17/2026 - 18:47

Jeff Mitton

Natural wonders that belong to all Americans should not be carved up or given away

The first humans to set foot in North America walked across the Bering Strait the last time glaciers were full. The glaciers held so much water that the sea level dropped 400 to 425 feet compared to today's levels, turning the Bering Strait to the Bering Land Bridge.

The bridge might have risen from the sea as early as 20,000 years ago, and it might have submerged as late as 11,000 years ago. Stone, bone and wooden implements can be dated to estimate when sites were occupied, such as the Lindenmeier site (14,000 years ago) in Larimer County or the Mahaffy Cache near Gregory Canyon in Boulder (13,000 years ago).

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Emeritus Jeff Mitton in a giant alcove in Utah's Neon Canyon known as the Golden Cathedral. It has a large opening in its ceiling that becomes a waterfall after a rain. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

The first white man to set foot in North America was Leif Erikson, a Norseman who established a colony in Newfoundland around 1,000 CE. It was abandoned 10 years later. A Spanish colony was established in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and an English settlement was founded in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in 1620.

My reason for this abbreviated history is to remind people of the uncontested history of America. When the Pilgrims stepped ashore 461 years ago, the continent had already been occupied for 14,000 years by numerous (between 2 to 7 million) and diverse people organized into hundreds of Indigenous tribes. Claims that America is and has always been a white, Christian country have no basis in fact.

In the short time since the earliest European settlements, many shameful things have been done to Indigenous peoples—massacres, forced marches, confinement to reservations, children disappearing from government schools, the list is tragically long.

Two wonderful things happened recently. In September 1996, President Bill Clinton set aside 1.7 million acres in Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. In December 2016, President Barack Obama set aside 1.35 million acres as the Bears Ears National Monument, also in Utah. Indigenous tribes were jubilant, for they considered these areas to be their sacred ancestral lands.

But in addition, six regional tribal entities were given advisory roles in stewardship and protectional of cultural resources for the Grand Staircase, and five regional tribal entities were given similar roles for Bears Ears. Sacred lands were protected and Indigenous tribal entities would share responsibilities for both management of the national monuments and protection of the sites and remaining artifacts, pictographs and petroglyphs.

In December 2017, President Donald Trump cut the sizes of the monuments by 85%. In October 2021, President Joe Biden re-established the monuments to their original sizes. In July 2026, President Trump hacked the national monuments a second time, by 90%.

President Trump justified his cuts to the national monuments as providing greater opportunities for energy extraction, or more precisely, mining and drilling. He also noted that this would increase the area open to cavorting about and ripping up the landscape with four-wheel drive and all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes.

President Trump rewards the incredibly rich CEOs of mining and drilling companies while neglecting the interests of Indigenous Americans and the people who treasure wildlife and spectacular landscapes. People seeking to minimize President Trump's slashes of the monuments might point out that no one has been forbidden to go to the places, they are just being declared "multi-use."

That sounds good, but it is vacuous. Have you ever tried to share your intended camping sites or hiking trails with a mine or a cluster of drilling rigs? Can you imagine camping beside razor wire, roaring pumps and brilliant lights? Once again, broken promises from Washington dash the hopes of Indigenous tribes.

But it is not just the Indigenous who are crushed. While the elected politicians in Utah favored Trump's gift to the rich, 70% of the people in Utah wanted the monuments to remain as they were established. Americans are proud of their national parks, and they believe that they were set aside for future generations, in perpetuity. They believe the same for national monuments—I know I did.

National parks and monuments are superb places to see plants, animals and stunning landscapes as they were naturally. They belong to all the people, and one billionaire should not have the right to gift them so that they can be used for profit.

A pot abandoned in Bears Ears National Monument around 1280 CE, when people migrated southward to escape a severe and prolonged drought. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument have scenery that rivals scenery of most national parks. I have camped in Bears Ears seven times and Grand Staircase eight times, and each adventure is a treasured memory. I took a six-hour hike and climb in Bears Ears to see a pot that was abandoned in 1280 CE, when the area was abandoned due to a lingering drought. It is believed that the pot has not been moved since that time.

In the Grand Staircase, I took a hike (twice!) on slick rock into the Escalante Canyon and up into Neon Canyon to see a giant alcove known as the Golden Cathedral. It has a large opening in its ceiling that becomes a waterfall after a rain. During a dry spell, climbers lower themselves by rope through the opening.

I have no faith, so do not consider these monuments sacred, but I have the conviction that these monuments, as they were initially drawn, are so grand and unique that they must be preserved in perpetuity. It would be a national shame, a travesty, just as it would be to let Glacier, or Rocky Mountain, or Yosemite national parks to be carved up into mining claims.

The way out of this tragedy is not apparent to me. But I feel strongly that one man should not have the right to give away what should belong to all, forever. I believe that a national vote on the future of these treasures would set them aside in perpetuity.

Jeff Mitton is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the �鶹��Ѱ��. His column, "Natural Selections," is also printed in the Boulder Daily Camera.

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Natural wonders that belong to all Americans should not be carved up or given away.

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Top photo: The Citadel, with cliff dwellings (not visible) that were easily defended when enemies came to the Bears Ears. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

Rebecca Safran wins American Ornithological Society Elliott Coues Award

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:15:35 +0000

Rebecca Safran wins American Ornithological Society Elliott Coues Award Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/17/2026 - 18:15

The �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology professor is recognized for her research on barn swallows and other avian groups, which has taken her across the world

Rebecca Safran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the �鶹��Ѱ��, has been awarded the Elliott Coues Award by the American Ornithological Society (AOS). The AOS is the world’s largest international ornithological society focused on the scientific study and conservation of birds.

The Elliott Coues Award recognizes outstanding and innovative contributions to ornithological research with no limitation to geographic area, sub-disciplines of ornithology or the time during which the work was done. The award, which consists of a medal and an honorarium, is named in honor of Elliott Coues, a pioneering ornithologist of the western United States and a founding member of the American Ornithologists Union (now AOS).

Rebecca Safran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, has been awarded the Elliott Coues Award by the American Ornithological Society.

“I am honored by this recognition of the research we do in our lab group at the �鶹��Ѱ��,” Safran said. “My first-ever scientific meeting was an AOS conference. I attend these meetings with students as often as I can for the best research updates on bird studies from around the world. There is always something new and exciting to learn. I am humbled to receive this award; past awardees are my academic heroes and have inspired much of the work many of us do today.”

In recognizing Safran, the AOS noted that she and her research group have traveled across the world to study barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) and have conducted comparative analyses on other avian groups as part of efforts to study the evolution and maintenance of population differentiation using ecological, genomics and behavioral studies.

Safran and her team established their research lab at the University of Colorado in 2008, where Safran's teaching is focused on speciation and science communication. She is the founding co-director of Inside the Greenhouse, which has a mission to find creative ways to communicate the science of climate change.

In naming Safran as an Elliott Coues Award winner, the AOS said she is passionate about the evolution and conservation of wild bird populations, interdisciplinary collaboration, art-science connections, issues related to belonging in STEM, natural history and providing learning opportunities for students at all stages of their education.

Safran is an AOS elective member (2011) and an elected board member of Environment for the Americas and the Colorado Environmental Film Festival. She is an elected fellow of the AOS (2016), the Animal Behavior Society (2024) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2026).

Safran previously received AOS travel grants in 1999 and 2003 and an AOU research grant in 2001. This support was key for Safran’s research and conference participation during graduate school. Safran noted she is grateful for the support the AOS now provides to members of her team for their research and conference attendance.

Safran said her work is not possible without the collaboration of students and colleagues and through funding by several entities including the AOS and National Science Foundation. Wherever she goes (and sometimes to the dismay of others walking with her), she is always on the lookout for H. rustica and their mud cup nests.

Safran earned her PhD at Cornell University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University.

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The �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology professor is recognized for her research on barn swallows and other avian groups, which has taken her across the world.

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Research shows flowering plants formed rainforests 10 million years earlier than previously thought

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:40:38 +0000

Research shows flowering plants formed rainforests 10 million years earlier than previously thought Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/17/2026 - 09:40

Rachel Sauer

�鶹��Ѱ��Museum curator adjoint Gary Upchurch and colleagues find evidence in ‘botanical Pompeii’ that forests of tropical flowering plants thrived millions of years before dinosaurs’ extinction

In the Jose Creek Formation of south-central New Mexico near the town of Truth or Consequences is what researchers call a “botanical Pompeii.”

There, preserved in volcanic ash, is fossil evidence that flowering plants became dominant in forests a lot earlier than previously thought—almost 10 million years earlier.

“There was a dogma that I helped create back in the ‘80s, which was that tropical-style rainforests, dominated by angiosperms (flowering plants), did not really get established until the Cenozoic (about 66 million years ago),” explains Gary Upchurch, �鶹��Ѱ��Museum curator adjoint and former �鶹��Ѱ�� postdoctoral researcher. “There may have been some farther back in very isolated regions, but there is a big expansion of this type of vegetation in the early Cenozoic.

Gary Upchurch, �鶹��Ѱ��Museum curator adjoint and former �鶹��Ѱ�� postdoctoral researcher, and his research colleagues found evidence that flowering plants formed rainforests 10 million years earlier than previously thought.

“So, I published papers on that back in the ‘80s, with the caveat that there may be some little bits here and there that are older.”

Over many years of research in the Jose Creek Formation, Upchurch and his colleagues discovered some of those “little bits”: diaspores, or the seeds and associated dispersal materials of flowering plants, dating back nearly 76 million years—almost 10 million years before an asteroid strike that led to the mass extinction of dinosaurs. They detail their findings in a paper recently published in the journal Science.

Previously, Upchurch explains, it was thought that flowering plants became dominant on the landscape only after this mass-extinction event, but the diaspores he and his colleagues unearthed in New Mexico say otherwise. They tell a story of angiosperms that developed large, fleshy fruits even before the rise of placental mammals and modern birds—which eat the fruit and help disperse the seeds—encouraged them to do so.

An anomaly in the geologic record

“Flowering plants themselves are an anomaly in the geologic record because all the major phyla of plants occur in a very narrow window of time, basically by the Late Devonian [382 to 359 million years ago] into the Carboniferous [359 to 299 million years ago],” Upchurch says. “The flowering plant lineage must have been around then, but we don't see anything that we would call flowering plants until the Cretaceous [145 to 66 million years ago].

“There are some tantalizing remains that go back further in time, but the oldest that everybody would agree on is about 140 million years old. Now, flowering plants started off as weedy plants, perhaps in forest understories, and their seeds were small and dispersed mostly without help, maybe a little wind. One of the debates has been, when did they become big? When did they become dominant on the landscape?”

As a postdoctoral paleobotany researcher at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and longtime professor at Texas State University, from which he retired in 2020, Upchurch contributed to longstanding ideas in paleobotany and paleoecology that flowering plants thrived after the dinosaurs.

Throughout his research career, though, he has encountered evidence challenging those ideas. One of his earlier papers detailed an angiosperm leaf assemblage with rainforest structure in the Mid-Cretaceous Dakota Formation of Kansas that’s about 100 million years old. And recent papers by different authors describe Campanian-age tropical rainforests in northern Mexico and North Africa.

He also repeatedly encountered bias in the fossil record having to do with the fact that “so many of our fossil deposits are from coastlines and carbonaceous deposits,” he says. “And when you look today in places like the southeastern U.S., the swamps tend to be dominated by conifers, even though more broadly flowering plants are the dominants.”

Upchurch says he began researching in the Jose Creek Formation almost by accident. During his postdoctoral studies, one of his focuses was end-Cretaceous extinction and coming up with evidence for mass mortality of vegetation in response to the asteroid impact, followed by recovery.

Around that time, noted geologist Greg Mack of New Mexico State University called Upchurch and said he had some fossils that he’d like somebody to look at.

“And whenever Greg Mack says that, you go, ‘Oh, my god, here’s my career,’” Upchurch says.

Seed and fruit fossils found in the Jose Creek Formation of south-central New Mexico. (Image: Cindy Looy and Jaemin Lee/UC Berkeley)

So, beginning in 1991, Upchurch and later members of his lab began studying a series of locations that turned out to be Late Campanian Age, about 76 to 72.1 million years ago, and that were far inland from the epicontinental seaway that traversed North America during the Cretaceous.

What they found was angiosperm dominance in at least some of the assemblages they studied, especially those that were developing not in swamps but in well-drained soils like those in the Jose Creek Formation.

Larger-than-expected fruit

To dig further into this dogma-busting evidence, Upchurch recruited students to join the research, one of whom was Dori Contreras, now director of paleontology and curator of paleobotany at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas.

During her PhD studies at the University of California Berkeley, Contreras continued pursuing this research, working with her advisor, Cindy Looy. Analyzing the reproductive structures of the samples that Upchurch, Contreras and their research colleagues collected over the years, UC Berkeley PhD student Jaemin Lee found in the well-preserved specimens evidence of larger-than-expected fleshy fruit—about the size of a blueberry.

“One possible reason for this had to do with the fact that we were not dealing with fruits and seeds that got washed into the nearest pond,” Upchurch explains. “We were dealing with material that had basically been dropped from the parent plants into a volcanic ash bed that was preserving both the forest leaf litter and the diaspores. It’s a Pompeii type of situation.

“There’s a series of volcanic ash beds where we have radiometric dates as well as different types of fossil plant material—we have leaves, we have diaspores, we have exquisitely preserved petrified woods, both of conifers and angiosperms.”

Further, the diaspores they found suggest an ecological evolution toward humid and shady tropical forests rather than sunny, open environments and dispersal assistance by extinct mammals and birds, Upchurch says.

In ecology, he explains, organisms broadly reproduce via r-selection or K-selection. R-selection is all about numbers: disperse a huge number of small seeds and figure a tiny percentage will germinate and become established. K-selected species, on the other hand, have bigger diaspores and the focus is on survival and establishment because conditions might not be ideal—say, the shade of a tropical forest floor.

Upchurch notes that while previously held ideas about angiosperms weren’t wrong—they did, in fact, abundantly flourish after the asteroid hit Earth—they were incomplete.

“As a scientist and a researcher, sometimes there have been moments I wasn’t expecting, these rare golden finds,” he says. “But the most important thing I’ve done is simply observe.”

Jaemin Lee, Dori L. Contreras, James G. Saulsbury and Cindy V. Looy contributed to this research.

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Top illustration: An artistic rendering of the forest understory in the late Cretaceous based on fossils from the Jose Creek Formation in New Mexico. (Illustration: Brian Engh/LivingRelicProductions.com)

What can one tiny scanner detect in Mammoth sunflowers?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 22:59:23 +0000

What can one tiny scanner detect in Mammoth sunflowers? Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/14/2026 - 16:59

Tiffany Plate

Researchers in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are taking a closer look at the drought-recovery efforts of these beloved blooms

Drive down even the driest road in Colorado at the height of summer, and you’re bound to see rows of bright sunflowers lining the shoulder. And even if at the end of a long hot day those long-stemmed blooms look a little wilted, there’s a good chance that by the next morning they’re standing tall again.

That observable bounceback has led researchers to believe that sunflowers are capable of a process called “refilling,” in which the plant’s water transport capability, which can fail during intense drought stress, returns to normal after it has been rewatered. Refilling flushes drought-induced air bubbles, called embolisms, out of the plant’s water transport tubes to deliver much-needed moisture throughout the plant.

Study authors (left to right) Jared Stewart, Stephanie Polutchko and Brendan Allen found that, contrary to popular belief, sunflowers were not capable of “refilling” themselves after experiencing drought and subsequent rewatering. (Photo: Stephanie Polutchko)

But according to a recent study by researchers in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, refilling is not the cause of sunflowers’ apparent bounceback.

“We didn't see a single convincing instance where even one of the tubes was repaired,” says Research Associate Jared Stewart. Stewart served as lead author on a recent article in the Journal of Experimental Botany documenting his team’s use of a micro-CT scanner to peek inside sunflowers at various stages of dehydration and rehydration.

The finding stands in stark contrast to the results of a study the same team performed on a weedy grass, which was published last year in the journal Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences USA. In that instance, the grasses’ refilling capabilities were remarkable.

“There wasn't any real gray area with the two findings,” says Stewart. “This grass refilled 100% completely in every single plant, every single time. In the sunflowers, we saw zero refilling.”

So where does that leave the field of plant hydraulics? “In last year's paper we showed that this refilling process does happen,” says Stewart. “But these results suggest it’s probably not nearly as prevalent as people thought.”

Why sunflowers?

The study grew out of a conversation between Stewart and his then-postdoctoral advisor Sean Gleason, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, along with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder colleagues Stephanie Polutchko, an assistant teaching professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and graduate student Brendan Allen. The four linked up with researchers at Colorado State University and mapped out a way they could leverage CSU’s micro-CT scanner to observe the drought processes in the plants.

Sunflower was an ideal candidate, Stewart says, because literature on plant hydraulics almost unanimously supported the idea that sunflowers were capable of refilling (in part because of the daily visual evidence of the flower wilting and then perking back up). In fact, for a long time most experts in plant hydraulics believed that refilling was a fairly universal phenomenon. The problem was that there was very little concrete evidence to back up that belief.

“Previously published evidence for this repair process has been scrutinized more and more intensely over the past decade,” says Stewart. The team thus opted for a simple experimental setup to ensure there was no confusion about the results.

A mouse-sized scanner to the rescue

An essential part of that simple design was using the micro-CT scanner that belongs to CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The small scanner is designed to scan small, live animals and was engineered to emit as little radiation as possible—so study subjects can be scanned repeatedly without exposure to high levels of radiation.

A sunflower plant experiencing drought and one week after being rewatered (top), and micro-CT images of its stem (bottom). The white arrows indicate where the stem was scanned, and the yellow areas in the micro-CT images show air bubbles, or embolisms, in yellow. (Image courtesy of study authors)

The setup was perfect for Stewart’s team, who scanned the 11 specimens of the “Mammoth” variety of sunflowers at three different times: while under drought stress, on the morning after re-watering and after one week of recovery under well-watered conditions. The plants were able to withstand the scanning with no visible damage.

That was not true in past studies on the topic, including research that dates back more than 40 years. “Conventional ways of studying this have involved basically cutting out portions of the plant,” says Stewart. “Then you do the same procedure on a different plant that’s been rewatered.”

That process of cutting the plant has been suspected to be problematic for more than 100 years, Stewart says, since it introduces air into the incision, making it difficult to measure the embolisms that existed in the tube prior to cutting. But that method has remained one of the most commonly used in the literature and may be a cause for confusion about the topic.

Now, Stewart believes they’ve come up with a gold standard method for studying this phenomenon. “Personally, I wouldn't trust any data generated with any other published methods at this moment,” he says.

A new line of questioning

Now that the team has validated their methodology with the two different studies, they see it as a first step in designing future experiments.

“There’s a ton of different directions we’d love to go with it,” says Stewart, adding that he hopes their results might be leveraged for agricultural efforts to improve food production and food security, especially as the planet potentially faces an increase in droughts.

“I think if we got to pick another crop to study and had unlimited time and money, it'd probably be corn or rice,” says Polutchko. “We know that a grass can do it, but it's one that’s an agricultural nuisance. So, can we have a grass that we like to eat that can also do this?”

Ideally, now that the method has been laid out, other researchers with access to similar micro-CT scanners can also conduct their own research, especially on crops with agricultural significance.

As for the sunflower’s drooping and reperking routine, Stewart, Polutchko and team are still stumped. “Maybe the plant doesn’t refill those embolisms, but it has a different strategy to work around that stress. Those are great questions, and we want to know the answers.”

“In true scientist fashion, you answer one question and 10 new ones pop up!” says Polutchko.

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Researchers in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are taking a closer look at the drought-recovery efforts of these beloved blooms.

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Top image: Unsplash

Scott Taylor elected councilor of the American Ornithological Society

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:33:13 +0000

Scott Taylor elected councilor of the American Ornithological Society Rachel Sauer Tue, 08/11/2026 - 09:33

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher will serve as a member of the Society’s governing body and promote its mission to support science that advances the understanding and conservation of birds

Scott Taylor, a �鶹��Ѱ�� professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of the Mountain Research Station, has been elected a councilor of the American Ornithological Society (AOS).

In this three-year volunteer term, Taylor, who also is a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, will serve as a member of the AOS governing body, which “establishes the direction and strategy of the AOS, makes high-level decisions about AOS’ priorities, oversees the sound financial management of AOS’ resources and ensures legal and ethical integrity of the organization,” according to the organization.

The AOS’ mission is to connect ornithologists, science and bird conservation by “supporting science that advances the understanding and conservation of birds, promoting broad access to ornithological science, supporting ornithologists throughout their career paths and fostering a welcoming, diverse, supportive and dynamic ornithological community.”

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Scott Taylor has been elected a councilor of the American Ornithological Society.

In his councilor candidate statement, Taylor noted that he is deeply committed to the AOS “as both a scientific home and a community that has shaped my career. Having benefited from AOS through collaborations, mentorship networks and opportunities to engage with cutting-edge research, I am motivated to give back in a leadership role.”

His involvement with AOS has included serving on committees, organizing symposia and building inclusive community spaces at annual meetings

“I am particularly interested in helping the Society continue to foster a vibrant, inclusive and forward-looking ornithological community while supporting early-career scientists, strengthening connections across disciplines and engaging in effective outreach,” he noted in his candidate statement.

Taylor, who grew up in rural southern Ontario, earned his undergraduate degree in wildlife biology at the University of Guelph and his PhD at Queen’s University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and worked as a field biologist in South America.

As principal investigator of the Taylor Lab, he leads research focused on hybridization, speciation, evolutionary ecology and population genomics, primarily of birds. He and his colleagues pursue research using natural hybrid zones and recent radiations to understand the genetic bases of traits involved in reproductive isolation, population divergence and speciation, and the impacts of anthropogenic change, including climate change, on species distributions, interactions and evolution.

Taylor also is host of the podcast “Okay, But… Birds,” which has addressed topics ranging from whether birds invented music to how wildfire smoke affects birds and a rumination on whether birdwatching is the original Pokémon with Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong.

“Being elected to AOS Council is an honor,” Taylor said. “I have long worked to help the AOS become a more inclusive society and am impressed by the dedication of the society to their members. In my new role, I’ll continue this work at a larger scale, supporting the next generation of ornithologists and ornithological research.”

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher will serve as a member of the Society’s governing body and promote its mission to support science that advances the understanding and conservation of birds.

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Top image: a flock of pelicans in Peru (Photo: Scott Taylor)

Meredith Betterton awarded Sloan Matter-to-Life grant

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:55:21 +0000

Meredith Betterton awarded Sloan Matter-to-Life grant Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/05/2026 - 14:55

Rachel Sauer

Research aligns with foundation goal to sharpen ‘scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter’

Meredith Betterton, a �鶹��Ѱ�� professor of physics and molecular, cellular and developmental biology, has been awarded a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Matter-to-Life program.

The two-year, $594,487 grant will support Betterton’s ongoing research on microtubules, the small, long tubes inside cells that serve several functions and that Betterton’s research suggests may be less fixed and static than previously thought.

The Sloan Matter-to-Life program aims “to sharpen our scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter, and to explore the conditions under which physical principles and mechanisms guide the complexification of matter towards life.”

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Meredith Betterton has been awarded a two-year, $594,487 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Matter-to-Life program.

Betterton and her research colleagues study microtubules in cells, which help maintain cell structure similar to how beams support a building and also act like highways that move traffic along, she explains.

“Because (microtubules) have this important role as highways that things stick to and then move along, people have thought about them as being kind of fixed,” she says. “You build a microtubule, it’s there to be a highway and then it’s pretty static.

“The thought has been that once they’re there (in the cell), they sit there. Our project has to do with the idea that there might be subtle changes within the (microtubule) structure that act as a signal that sends information—so they act in some ways not as a highway, but like a telephone wire that’s sending signals.”

Building with bricks

Microtubules are built of subunits, called tubulin, that can be compared to bricks, Betterton explains. These tubulin “bricks” are known to make small internal changes to their shape and size; what hasn’t been known is what happens to the rest of the tubulin in the microtubule if one changes. “Imagine packing a lot of bricks together in a wall,” she says. “If you change the shape of one, what happens to the others nearby?”

Several years ago, Betterton and her research group, in collaboration with another team of research colleagues including Radhika Subramanian and Sithara S. Wijeratne at Harvard Medical School, were studying “traffic” along microtubules, which is done by motor proteins. These proteins take “steps” along the microtubule. They also can pile up and cause traffic jams, so Betterton and her colleagues were studying those jams to better understand the motors.

The researchers discovered this phenomenon because the math wasn’t working. “In my group we were working on mathematical modeling of this, and we couldn’t get the model to work,” she says. “We put in measurements, and the equations gave us predictions that were really different from what experiments showed. We found the only way we could get the model to make sense was if something was happening where the motors could talk to each other over really long distances.”

While this action happens on a nanometer scale, “if you scaled it up it would be as if, when you’re driving a car, you could know there’s another car two miles away and how fast it’s driving,” she says. “That really was the initial discovery—this weird, long-range effect that we didn’t know where it was coming from.”

Other research had explored the conformational transitions, or structural shifts in tubulin, and how motor proteins can stick to microtubules and change their state if they bind in large numbers. Betterton and her research group are exploring whether a change of state can happen when motor proteins bind in small numbers and send signals over long distances.

How cells process information

A key aspect of this research, Betterton says, is it explores a different paradigm for how to think about these particular molecules in cells and aims for broader understanding of the way cells process information.

For example, she says, much is known about how neurons in the brain send electrical signals—a vital process for information transmission in the brain—but that process “can only happen in that one type of cell, whereas microtubules are in every cell,” Betterton says. “They could be sensing something happening in one part of the cell, so we’re studying this new way that cells could be responding.”

She adds that there are various potential applications for this avenue of research, including developing more targeted chemotherapy drugs: “There’s one (tubulin) that seems to be resistant to this subtle expansion and contraction. Recent work shows that makes them not as responsive to chemotherapy drugs. Because microtubules are involved in cell division, some first-line chemotherapy drugs for cancer act against microtubules.

“What has been discovered is that some cancers can resist these chemotherapy drugs by switching to this other type of tubulin that doesn’t change shape as well,” she says, adding that understanding more about tubulin expansion and contraction could possibly lead to more effective drugs.

There also could be potential applications in the physics of materials and using microtubules and motor proteins to make new types of materials that are more tunable to specific functions.

“The Sloan program is interested in this research because this specific program is called Matter-to-Life,” Betterton says. “What that’s trying to say of matter is that it’s some collections of molecules, but what about it becomes different between something that’s inert versus something that could be more alive? That’s a really exciting question.”

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Research aligns with foundation goal to sharpen ‘scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter.'

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Top image: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

National honor recognizes physics teaching excellence

juch8046 — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:31:53 +0000

National honor recognizes physics teaching excellence juch8046 Mon, 08/03/2026 - 08:31

Carl Wieman, Katherine Eggert (interim dean, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder College of Arts and Sciences), Tobin Munsat, Noah Finkelstein and Erika Randall (dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder) celebrate the recognition on Monday, August 3, for �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's Department of Physics. Photo: John Eisele

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Physics named inaugural recipient of the Carl E. Wieman Award for Excellence for sustained commitment to high-quality undergraduate education

The �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Physics has received national recognition as an inaugural recipient of the Carl E. Wieman Award for Excellence, a new honor presented by the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU).

The award recognizes research university departments and offices that demonstrate a sustained commitment to teaching excellence and high-quality undergraduate education. UERU also recognized the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Programs, Student Success, and Effectiveness at the University of Illinois Chicago with a Wieman award.

Carl E. Wieman, one of the �鶹��Ѱ��Department of Physics' most distinguished faculty members, received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics while a faculty member, sharing the prize with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder physics professor and JILA fellow Eric Cornell. Photo: John Eisele

For the Department of Physics, the recognition reflects the department’s longstanding commitment to scientific discovery, physics education research and student success. It also carries special significance because the award is named for Carl E. Wieman, one of the department’s most distinguished faculty members.

Wieman received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics while a faculty member at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, sharing the prize with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder physics professor and JILA fellow Eric Cornell. Their groundbreaking work achieved the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate. Wieman and Cornell’s scientific accomplishments helped elevate �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s international reputation in physics.

Wieman’s impact extends well beyond the laboratory. Following his Nobel Prize-winning research, he launched the PhET initiative focused on improving science education and went on to become an internationally recognized scholar of teaching and learning. He later returned to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder as a science education advisor and collaborator, helping advance efforts to improve teaching effectiveness and student learning across STEM disciplines.

Today, his influence continues through research, mentorship and scholarship, including his recent book, How to Learn to Think Like a Skilled Engineer or Scientist and How to Teach It.

That legacy is reflected in the work now being recognized. According to UERU, the Department of Physics was selected for its leadership in rethinking teaching evaluation. Drawing on the department's internationally recognized contributions to physics education research, faculty leaders developed approaches that use multiple measures to evaluate instructional excellence and support effective teaching. Led by Vice Chair Noah Finkelstein and other faculty partners, the effort helped shape teaching evaluation reforms across multiple colleges at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

“Our department is remarkable in its impact and commitment to excellence in all its activities including education, research and service,” Finkelstein said. “This community continues to innovate and keep our students at the center of what we do. We are so grateful for this recognition from UREU - a national leader in advancing our collective capacities in undergraduate education.”

The department’s success has been strengthened through participation in national initiatives focused on undergraduate STEM education, including the AAU STEM Education Initiative, APLU’s Network of STEM Education Centers, the former Bay View Alliance and UERU’s Raising the Bar Initiative, and the Transforming Higher Education–Multidimensional Evaluation of Teaching project, which culminated in the 2026 Harvard Education Press book, Transforming College Teaching Evaluation: A Framework for Advancing Instructional Excellence.

“This award is enormously meaningful for our department, especially because it bears Carl Wieman’s name,” said Tobin Munsat, chair of the Department of Physics. “Carl showed us that groundbreaking research and a deep commitment to teaching can, and should, go hand in hand. This recognition affirms our commitment to giving students the best education we can.”

Steven P. Dandaneau, UERU Executive Director and Associate Provost at Colorado State University, noted that both universities receiving the inaugural Carl E. Wieman Award for Excellence “demonstrate that excellence in undergraduate education is not the product of isolated innovators, but of intentional systems, leadership and accountability.”

The recognition underscores the department’s role as a national leader in the ongoing effort to improve undergraduate education at research universities. "This award emphasizes accountability, an often-overlooked component of educational excellence," said Wieman. "By recognizing departments that have built systems to support and assess excellence in teaching and learning, this award shines a light on models worthy of attention and emulation."

In many ways, the recognition comes full circle. An award named for a Nobel laureate whose career helped redefine both modern physics and science education now honors the department where much of that work began. For the department, which earned the No. 4 spot among public universities in the latest U.S. News & World Report graduate program rankings, the award reflects the department's longstanding commitment to research excellence, outstanding teaching and the education of future physicists.

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Physics named inaugural recipient of the Carl E. Wieman Award for Excellence for sustained commitment to high-quality undergraduate education.

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Top photo: Nikita Palenov / Unsplash

Lee Niswander awarded 2026 Edwin G. Conklin Medal

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:31:43 +0000

Lee Niswander awarded 2026 Edwin G. Conklin Medal Rachel Sauer Fri, 07/31/2026 - 10:31

Mikayla Eppert

The award recognizes the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder developmental biologist for extraordinary research contributions being a mentor who helped train the next generation of outstanding scientists

Lee Niswander has been named the 2026 recipient of the Edwin G. Conklin Medal from the Society for Developmental Biology.

A distinguished professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the �鶹��Ѱ��, Niswander joins a group of researchers recognized for their exceptional contributions to developmental biology and their dedication to training the next generation of scientists.

Named after Edwin G. Conklin, a pioneering developmental biologist and American embryologist, the medal recognizes both scientific impact and mentorship.

Lee Niswander is a distinguished professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

“It is a huge honor to receive the 2026 Edwin G. Conklin Medal from the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB). I thank SDB for nurturing my career and the education and careers of my trainees through the years,” said Niswander. “I am extremely pleased to share in the honor of this award with all of my current and former trainees whose research drove our discoveries and revealed the wonders of the embryo.”

This award follows on the heels of Niswander earlier this year receiving the 2026 Hazel Barnes Prize and being elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Niswander is described by her peers and trainees as a generous mentor, thoughtful leader and a disarmingly humble scientist.

“Lee is fearless,” said Maria Barna, Niswander’s former graduate student who now runs her own lab at Stanford. “[She] has instilled that in me."

Niswander’s work has shaped scientists’ understanding of how the body plan arises in early embryos. Her seminal contributions range from work on FGF signaling in limb development to the role of cell cilia during early organ development, and, more recently, efforts to understand the mechanisms underlying human neural tube defects.

'Wow, this is really cool'

Niswander originally became interested in research as an undergraduate at the �鶹��Ѱ��, where she first stepped into a lab through a work-study program. “Once I started to do research, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really cool,’” she recalled.

That exposure led Niswander to graduate school at Case Western Reserve University, where she joined the developmental biology program. She remembers thinking, “I don’t know anything about development … I’m going to do that,” before joining the lab of Terry Magnuson, PhD.

Her dissertation work used genetic deletions in mice to probe which regions of chromosome 7 are necessary for embryonic development. She spent time in Sweden learning a specialized technique that helped her complete the work.

“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel if somebody else knows how to do it,” she said. “Go learn from an expert.”

After completing her PhD, Niswander joined the lab of Gail Martin, PhD, at the University of California, San Francisco, as a postdoctoral fellow. She began working on limb development, a topic no one else in the lab was pursuing at the time, and trained further at University College London with Cheryll Tickle, PhD, a leading expert in the field.

During this work, she found expression of FGF4 in the apical ectodermal ridge (AER) is sufficient for limb outgrowth—a finding that reflected the technical curiosity and willingness to seek outside expertise that would come to define her approach to science.

On her first day as a principal investigator, Niswander walked into an empty lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

“It’s just me … I can’t believe they let me do this,” she remembers thinking. This marked the beginning of her independent research career. Soon after, Niswander began a collaboration with Kathryn Anderson, PhD, launching a large-scale forward genetic screen for developmental mutants in mice.

One major finding to emerge from the screen was in identifying ciliary proteins that help integrate Hedgehog signaling during organogenesis, which Barna describes as, “dogma changing.” The findings reconceptualized cilia from passive “cellular antennas” into active signaling hubs that drive decisions about development. “The cilia is not just a boring antenna that's sticking out of the cell but is like a major signaling center also," Barna noted.

I am extremely pleased to share in the honor of this award with all of my current and former trainees whose research drove our discoveries and revealed the wonders of the embryo.”

Seeking the bigger picture

Niswander later returned to the �鶹��Ѱ��, where her work expanded from identifying genes linked to neural tube defects to probing the broader underlying mechanisms. "[Niswander] was looking for a way to plug in some of these basic discoveries into human health even more,” said Barna.

Neural tube defects remain a central focus of her current work, reflecting her broader approach to science: “I’d be bored to tears to study anything at one level. I want to see things in that bigger picture,” she explained.

Niswander continues to teach limb development as a way of sharing what she finds most compelling about developmental biology and modeling the mentorship style she values.

“I still teach limb development because I think it's such an easy system for somebody to say, ‘Oh yeah, why are my fingers here and my shoulder there?’” she said.

Although her research has since expanded beyond questions of limb development, her postdoctoral findings still stand out to her. Remove the AER and limb growth stalls; replace its signal with FGF and the limb continues to grow.

“I still find it astounding,” she said, “that you can take off this whole strip of tissue – the apical ridge – and just put back in FGF, and the limb will continue to grow.”

Across her independent career, Niswander has trained nearly 50 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who have gone on to careers in science and beyond: professors, scientists, journalists and editors.

“I have no preconceived notions that somebody’s going to be like me,” Niswander said. “I give people opportunities all the time to pursue the career path that they want."

For Niswander, what has made it all worthwhile comes without hesitation.

"The people are my legacy,” she said. "None of this would be fun if you didn't have people in your lab. I live vicariously through all the wonderful people that have come through my lab."

Barna saw that approach firsthand.

“She encouraged this kind of bold and free way of doing science in the lab that I try to emulate,” said Barna. “But it’s very difficult to emulate Lee."

Niswander began her work at a single lab bench as an undergraduate, but her career has since evolved into one that has moved across institutions and continents, produced work spanning human disease and developmental biology, and trained dozens of scientists. Yet, Niswander still describes the impact of her work in the same way.

“The research is fun,” she said. “You publish papers and stuff, but to me it’s the people and what they’ve done.”

In recognizing Niswander with the Conklin Medal, the Society for Developmental Biology said Niswander exemplifies the scientific impact and mentorship recognized by the organization through a career defined by curiosity, fearlessness and a deep commitment to training the next generation of scientists.

—Bradley Worrell contributed to this article

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The award recognizes the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder developmental biologist for extraordinary research contributions being a mentor who helped train the next generation of outstanding scientists.

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How gut bacteria offer clues about the cost of industrialization

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:44:49 +0000

How gut bacteria offer clues about the cost of industrialization Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/30/2026 - 09:44

Cody DeBos

In newly published research, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Matthew Olm and colleagues map the gut microbiome’s hidden global diversity

When Matthew Olm’s daughter was born, he did something most parents never consider. He gave her a type of experimental probiotic designed to nudge her infant gut microbiome in a healthy direction.

Then again, most new parents don’t have a PhD in microbiology or run their own research lab studying microbes from around the world.

“It was fascinating in terms of how well it worked to colonize my daughter’s gut, and it really validated a lot of the science that I’d read about,” he says.

Matthew Olm, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant professor of integrative physiology, recently collaborated on a study examining the gut microbiomes of eight tribal communities across India.

At the time, Olm was a postdoc in Justin Sonnenburg’s lab at Stanford University, curious to know more about what happens to the human gut microbiome as one’s lifestyle industrializes.

“There’s a lot of reason to suspect that the way industrialization changes the microbiome opens you up to immune disease. Many studies also show that the infant microbiome is especially important in this regard,” he says.

Olm, now running his own lab and serving as an assistant professor of integrative physiology at the �鶹��Ѱ��, recently collaborated on a study examining the gut microbiomes of eight tribal communities across India.

While trying to understand what these communities’ relative isolation from industrialization may have preserved, the data revealed an unexpected story.

A better global picture

Now a paper published in the journal Gut Microbes, the project first found Olm while he was at Stanford.

“A graduate student, Abhijit Sanjiv Kulkarni, came up to my (principal investigator) Justin at a conference and asked if we wanted to help out with the analysis. He had done this sampling campaign across all of these different tribes in India and had a lot of microbiome samples,” Olm recalls.

It was a unique proposition.

Some 71% of gut microbiome samples come from the United States, Europe or Canada. Almost half of all samples come from the United States despite the country accounting for just 4.3% of the global population. Samples from more populous areas like Africa and Southeast Asia, particularly communities outside urban hubs, are studied far less often.

One challenge of acquiring samples from less developed areas, Olm says, is that the sample material must be frozen immediately lest the microbes inside keep growing and distort the snapshot.

Rather than freezing in the field, the team preserved each sample on-site with a chemical stabilization buffer that halts microbial growth until the samples could be frozen back at the lab. Olm then catalogued the samples and ran the initial analysis, doing much of the work with inStrain, a genome analysis tool he had written during his PhD work at UC Berkeley.

He points out that a single microbe most people have heard of, like the E. coli found naturally in your gut, isn’t really one thing at all.

Geographic and dietary diversity of the eight sampled tribal populations in India. A, Photographs of traditional dwellings, residents, and unique foods in participating villages. B, Geographical locations of the eight sampled populations. Map is from Survey of India. Green shading indicates tribal populations as a percentage of state population in the 2011 Census of India. C, Food items consumed daily by at least one population.

“That’s millions, billions, trillions of cells, and each individual cell is slightly different from the others,” Olm says.

inStrain allows researchers to see the hidden variations so they can trace the lineage of bacterial strains within communities, regions and even family trees.

Where do our microbes come from?

The study’s most striking finding centers on Bifidobacterium, a genus prized for its health benefits. Analysis showed it in much greater abundance among dairy-consuming Trans-Himalayan communities than anywhere else in the study. The microbes were also genetically distinct from Bifidobacterium strains found in industrialized populations.

Olm says this result speaks to a long-running debate over where we get our gut microbes from. Does everyone share the same global pool of microbes, altered by our diet and lifestyle, or does physical exposure determine our gut’s unique makeup?

“Actually, the physical source matters a lot. Even if you eat a lot of potatoes, if you don’t interact with a microbe that specializes in digesting potatoes, you’re never going to pick that strain up,” Olm explains.

The findings from these communities suggest their unique gut microbiome strains co-evolved alongside the populations themselves, passed down from generation to generation, rather than being acquired because of a shared diet. An American who started eating more dairy today, Olm says, would likely never achieve a similar microbiome through diet alone.

The cost of a cleaner world

Science has proven the benefits of a diverse microbiome. Yet, industrialized societies are notorious for a lack of gut diversity, even among individuals who do everything “right” when it comes to diet and lifestyle factors.

Olm says this traces back to a handful of compounding factors.

“We have a lot more antibiotic exposure, birth by C-section and these other medical things. Diet plays a role too,” he says.

But the biggest factor is one most people aren’t as comfortable discussing: modern sanitation.

Olm explains that acquiring new microbes from other people typically requires a level of everyday exposure that handwashing and modern plumbing have all but eliminated in industrialized societies.

“A hundred years ago, the number one causes of death were all infectious disease, because we didn't have this hygiene,” Olm says. “Hygiene is definitely a good thing, but the downside is you're also not exposed to the way you'd naturally pick up healthy microbes from other people and other people’s poop.”

In other words, our cleaner world is also one with less microbial diversity.

“The more you sanitize the environment, maybe the less diverse microbiome you have, but also the less infectious disease you have,” Olm says.

He’s careful to reiterate that this isn’t an argument against modern medicine. It’s simply a reminder that everything has a trade-off.

There’s a lot of reason to suspect that the way industrialization changes the microbiome opens you up to immune disease."

“If you’re prescribed antibiotics for an ear infection, it’s important to take it. You should be washing your hands regularly and practicing good hygiene. Yes, it will have some harm on your microbiome, but in the cost-benefit analysis, modern medicine and sanitation still win,” he says.

Racing to preserve a moving target

As the world moves further along the path of industrialization, we risk losing much of the gut diversity our ancestors had. Once that diversity is gone, Olm says, it’s very difficult to bring it back—let alone study it.

This is why some researchers have begun freezing and banking fecal samples from non-industrialized populations, similar to preserving seed banks for crop diversity. Others have taken to studying ancient fossilized fecal matter to recover snapshots of gut microbiomes lost millennia ago.

While projects like the one Olm collaborated on can reveal some hidden secrets of humanity’s gut health, he is careful not to frame traditional communities as something to be preserved for the benefit of research.

Pointing to the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania, he says it’s tempting to romanticize the lifestyle as something worth protecting, but adds, “If you talk to some of these communities, they want education, they want modern medicine.”

Industrialization, he says, is “part of the human condition.”

“I don’t think it’s right to discourage these non-industrialized populations from becoming industrialized with the rest of the world just so it benefits our microbiomes,” Olm adds.

“Most of the microbes in our gut, they eat fiber, and it's the primary food source for our microbiome," says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Matthew Olm. "The more fiber you eat, the more substrate there is to sustain a healthy microbiome." (Photo: iStock)

Instead of discouraging it, his lab publishes its sequencing data publicly, serving as what he calls a computational resource for future researchers to study before these unique microbiomes change further.

What about your gut?

As for the rest of us, Olm’s advice on a healthy microbiome is refreshingly unglamorous in a world where we are constantly bombarded by ads and influencers pushing one supplement or the next.

“Eat more fiber. That’s definitely the number one recommendation,” he says.

Recommended daily fiber intake in the U.S. is about 25 to 28 grams per day for women and between 28 and 34 grams per day for men, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Olm says most Americans get just 10 grams of fiber from their diet each day. Traditional hunter-gatherer communities may eat up to 200 grams a day during certain bountiful seasons.

“Most of the microbes in our gut, they eat fiber, and it's the primary food source for our microbiome. The more fiber you eat, the more substrate there is to sustain a healthy microbiome,” Olm adds.

It’s not a flashy recommendation, but that’s the point. In a field full of trendy probiotics that are more marketing than science, the answer may be as simple as supporting the system our bodies have relied on for thousands of years.

For Olm and his lab moving forward, the real promise of gut microbiome research lies in building a fuller picture of what a healthy gut can look like and how we can support it with science-backed interventions.

As more of the world's underrepresented microbiomes get studied, that picture, and our knowledge of our own health, can only be clearer.

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In newly published research, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Matthew Olm and colleagues map the gut microbiome’s hidden global diversity.

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Top image: "Farm Near Karlee, India" by Marianne North

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