(NEW) MOE AcRF Tier 2 Grant Awarded to Asst Prof Eleanor Slade - Tropical Ecology & Entomology Lab

The Tropical Ecology & Entomology Lab is pleased to announce that Dr. Eleanor Slade has successfully been awarded the Academic Research Fund (AcRF) Tier 2 Grant from the Ministry of Education in Singapore.

We are looking forward to working with our Co-PIs of this grant, Dr Nalini Puniamoorthy (PI of Reproductive Evolution Lab, NUS) and Dr Shawn Lum (Senior Lecturer at ASE-NTU) as well as our collaborators, Dr Chua Siew Chin (Senior Lecturer at NUS) and Dr Anuj Jain (Preventing Extinctions Coordinator at BirdLife International).

The Tropical Ecology & Entomology Lab. Photo 2022 Grace Tay

Titled "Unraveling the impacts of environmental change and restoration initiatives on biodiversity and species interactions in Southeast Asian ecosystems", this grant is awarded to research projects of high academic significance and demonstrates strong potential for discovering novel breakthroughs, innovations and discoveries that will benefit the wider academic community.

With the support of this grant, our onward developments will advance our invertebrate molecular barcoding capabilities and outputs, improve our understanding of soil/ leaf litter invertebrate, fungi and pollinator-plant networks in Singapore, develop comprehensive datasets (e.g., taxonomic checklists) and identification guides for dung beetles and also to build stronger relationships with our collaborators through international work visits and conferences to countries such as Malaysia, Japan and Finland.

Our lab had a gathering last week to celebrate this achievement with some new lab t-shirts, Bugopoly and cake!