News

On October 19, UC Davis celebrated something fundamental to graduate education that too often goes unrecognized: the extraordinary work of mentorship.

The Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentorship Award, conferred by Graduate Studies in partnership with the Graduate Council of the Academic Senate, recognizes faculty whose exceptional mentorship has made a lasting difference in the lives of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. 

The laboratory of Associate Professor Rachael Bay received a 2026 UC Davis Lab Safety Award, representing the College of Biological Sciences among this year’s honorees.

The lab studies coral reefs in the Cook Islands and marine life along the California coast to better understand evolutionary responses to climate change. With research spanning international fieldwork and computational analysis on campus, the team’s safety efforts include field safety plans for international travel and ergonomic improvements in its computational lab.

When they’re first born, baby Amazon mollies aren’t super social, but after about three weeks, something switches and they become socially attuned to their schoolmates. A new study led by researchers from the University of California, Davis, shows that groups of fish develop idiosyncratic group dynamics, even when the groups are genetically identical.

A male fruit fly aspiring to mate faces steep odds. First, he must spend up to 20 minutes maniacally buzzing and dancing. Even then, his success or failure hinges on a single split-second maneuver, when he vaults onto the female, parts her wings, and connects his abdomen to hers. If the gymnastics go awry, the female delivers a powerful mule-kick — sending him tumbling away. 

For Peter Wainwright, the academic path was simple: he simply followed his fascination with fish.

"I dare say there wasn't a lot of deep thought about what direction I should go in my life," he said. "It was more, I like fish, let's see if I can do something with fish. It was all very organic."

Anusha Bishop, a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Associate Professor Rachael Bay, has been selected for a prestigious three-year fellowship from the Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF).

As the planet warms, how will plants respond? For a clue, evolutionary ecologists like Sharon Strauss can move a plant outside of its comfort zone.

Strauss, a distinguished professor emerita of evolution and ecology, has conducted numerous experiments growing plants under conditions where they aren’t usually found, with the aim of studying how they’ll respond.

Kate Laskowski, an associate professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, has been named the Senior Researcher recipient of the inaugural Ctrl-Z Award, which recognizes scientists who take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record after discovering substantial errors in their published work.

To avoid self-pollination, avocado trees alternate between opening male and female flowers at different times of day. Some avocados are female in the morning and male in the afternoon, while others are on the opposite schedule. How avocados do this has been unclear — until now.

The mountain jewelflower inhabits a wide swath of California and Oregon, from summer-scorched foothills to high mountains where snow falls during winter. But it is already suffering from climate change, with plants in the mountains struggling to survive both summers and winters, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.