Reichert awarded $1.5M CAREER grant from NSF for animal behavior research
Friday, March 1, 2024
Media Contact: Elizabeth Gosney | CAS Marketing and Communications Manager | 405-744-7497 | egosney@okstate.edu
Oklahoma State University Department of Integrative Biology professor Dr. Michael Reichert has been awarded a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation totaling more than $1.5 million for research on animal behavior.
“An NSF CAREER award is NSF's most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty,” said Dr. Jason Belden, integrative biology department head. “Dr. Reichert has been incredibly successful in the early stages of his career and this award provides the funding to maintain his research and student training at very high levels.”
Reichert’s project, “The Metabolic Basis of Individual Variation in Behavior,” focuses on the role energy plays in fueling the behaviors that impact an animal’s ability to survive and reproduce.
“We are asking the question whether individuals differ in their metabolic rates, and whether these are responsible for differences in behavior,” Reichert said. “We are testing this using acoustic mate attraction calling in gray treefrogs because these calls take a huge amount of energy to make, and so it is likely that metabolism and behavior are related.
“We will also look at whether genetic differences between individuals affect their metabolism and behavior, and whether these relationships are affected by temperature.”
The award is funded under the NSF Faculty Early Career Development category and will pay out over the next five years. It will allow Reichert to expand his team of researchers while opening the door for new perspectives; Students from all academic levels will have the opportunity to get hands-on experience in Reichert’s lab.
“This is a project that can only be accomplished by a large team,” Reichert said. “The project integrates my core research expertise of animal behavior with techniques from physiology and genomics. These techniques are expensive and so having this funding provides me with the support I need to begin to do this kind of broader work, which will be much more impactful because it draws from so many different fields.”
Beyond research outcomes and student experience, Reichert is advancing K-12 STEM education in Oklahoma.
“I will teach a new course for graduate students on research mentoring to train the next generation of mentors,” Reichert said. “I am also partnering with an education studio to translate my research into a series of lesson plans for middle school students. These lesson plans will be freely available and meet science education standards, and we will collaborate with middle school teachers in Oklahoma to implement these plans in the classroom.”
To learn more about Reichert’s research, visit his OSU Experts page.
Story By: Erin Weaver, CAS Communications Coordinator | erin.weaver@okstate.edu