Our summer student Gavin Belfry was just featured by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Learn more about his work and experience in the mountains at:

https://www.rmbl.org/article/science-story-dec-2019/

For University of Tennessee undergraduate Gavin Belfry, the summer of 2019 was particularly seedy. He spent the summer assisting with Dr. Benjamin Blonder’s seed distribution research at RMBL. For six years, Dr. Blonder’s team has been looking at where plants are showing up at a series of plots on Mount Baldy. The point is to see not only what the local plant community looks like but also why the plants are there.

Gavin, who grew up on a small farm in Dandridge, Tennessee, is his family’s first-generation college undergraduate. He was at RMBL as this year’s recipient of the Ryan Brown Scholarship. “I was very, very surprised when I got it,” he said. After having already earned a full-ride scholarship to the University of Tennessee, it’s not that surprising to others.

How does he feel about his summer at RMBL? “It’s absolutely changed my life,” he said. A student focused on ecology and evolutionary biology, Gavin was perfectly suited for Dr. Blonder’s Macrosystems Ecology Lab. What’s more, in addition to studying seed distribution, he also spent time on Dr. Blonder’s aspen mortality survey. Scientists are trying to learn the genetic and ecophysiological basis for the massive deaths of quaking aspen in drought-ravaged southwestern Colorado. Being a strong hiker, Gavin was quickly tapped for the field team and given a six-foot slingshot to knock leaves out of the surveyed trees.