Her project, “Assessing Preservation of Chemical Compounds in Pressed Plants," will focus on whether herbarium specimens collected over hundreds of years harbor chemical compounds that reveal mechanisms responsible for changing insect-plant interactions.
"In particular, the project will reveal extent to which herbarium specimens that are dried and stored continue to harbor key chemicals—such as defensive chemicals against insects created by plants themselves and pesticides—in their leaves," Meineke said. "This project will inform my lab's future investigations into effects of urbanization and climate change on insect herbivores."
Individual awards ranged from $15,000 to $36,000, or totalling $300,000. This is the 15th year that Hellman fellowships have been awarded to UC Davis faculty. San Francisco philathropists Warren and Chris Hellman established the program in 1995 in partnership with their daughter Frances Hellman, then a newly tenured member of the UC San Diego faculty, and now a professor of physics at UC Berkeley.
Meinke, a native of Greenville, N.C., joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology on March 1, 2020, from the Harvard University Herbaria. As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, she studied how urbanization and climate change have affected plant-insect relationships worldwide over the past 100-plus years.
Emily received her bachelor of science degree in environmental science, with a minor in biology, in 2008 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She obtained her doctorate in entomology in 2016 from North Carolina State University, studying with major professors Steven Frank and Robert Dunn. Her dissertation: "Understanding the Consequences of Urban Warming for Street Trees and Their Insect Pests."
Meineke joins three other UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty as recipients of Hellman Fellowships:
- Community ecologist Rachel Vannette, now an associate professor, won the award 2018. (See news story)
- Honey bee scientist Brian Johnson, now an associate professor, received the award in 2015. (See news story)
- Community ecologist Louie Yang, now a professor, won the award in 2012. (See news story)
Although the Hellmans ended their annual fellowship funding on all UC campuses two years ago, they provided endowments to the UC campuses ($6 million to UC Davis) to enable “fellowships in perpetuity,” according to a UC Davis news story.