• Special thanks:
To Robert Mendez for a $5,000 donation for graduate student support to work on our evolution outreach efforts. In his words: "Imagine what the world would be like, if everyone understood the evolutionary process."
To Alan and Margaret Diehl for their donation of a Leafscan 45 SCSI film scanner, which we will be able to use for digitizing color and black & white 35 mm negatives and slides.

• Congratulations!
To Tony Barnosky on his grant from the National Science Foundation of $270,000 for three years in order to establish a natural baseline of species richness in the American West. Establishing this baseline and examining patterns of species richness over time will allow us to better understand the human impact on this ecosystem.
To Stephanie Bush, who received a three-year National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship in evolutionary biology.
To Lorraine Casazza, first for passing her oral exams and also on her year-long Fulbright Fellowship for work in Egypt in April. She plans to work with our colleagues at the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries in Alexandria on the coevolution of larger foraminifera and their dinoflagellate symbionts on the Red Sea reefs and nearby fossil deposits.

To Edward Davis who will begin a postdoctoral position with the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. The position is funded through California State Parks and will focus on developing GIS methods that can be used to make conservation decisions based on future evolutionary potential as well as current diversity.
To Scott Fay and Jenny McGuire on their acceptance into the BNHM's Exploring California Biodiversity program, which provides them a full year's fellowship and the opportunity to inspire in urban children an appreciation for California's biodiversity.
To Annie and Josh Frankel on the birth of their son, Lincoln Alexei Frankel on February 11!
To Samantha Hopkins who has accepted a two-year postdoctoral position at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC. She will begin her work in August on "Causes and Consequences of the Evolution of Fossoriality."
To Crissy Huffard who will be starting a postdoctoral position in Bruce Robison's lab at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to study the reproductive biology of midwater cephalopods.
To Andrew Lee who received a Sigma Xi research grant ($800) for his study on comparative dinosaur bone histology.