Biology researcher receives NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

Thursday, Jun 27, 2024 • Greg Pederson :

A biology researcher at The University of Texas at Arlington has received a prestigious grant to continue and expand his research about the effects of ecology on pollution.

Jordan Brown, a postdoctoral research associate in biology, was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology from the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Biological Sciences. The awards support postdoctoral fellows in biology whose research focuses on, among other areas, studying the rules governing interactions between genomes, environments, and phenotypes.

Brown works in the lab of Shane DuBay, UTA assistant professor of biology. DuBay’s lab group studies evolutionary ecology, environmental science, and natural history, with the goal of understanding the consequences of environmental change on the world.

“More than anything, I was relieved when I found out about receiving the fellowship,” Brown said. “I was always very confident that I would somehow be able to complete all my research plans for the next few years, especially with Dr. DuBay’s help, but having NSF support is going to remove so many barriers and provide so many new opportunities to expand my research plans.”

“It’s really exciting to see the NSF support the innovative research that Jordan has been developing. It’s a huge accomplishment,” DuBay said. “His work has incredible potential to advance our knowledge about pollution histories and the diverse and uneven impacts of environmental pollution.”

One project Brown is working on involves analyzing bird specimens from museum collections in Europe and assessing whether they can be used as indicators of air pollution that occurred between the mid-1800s and the present day.

Many older bird specimens from museums which were collected in industrialized areas are notably darker in their plumage than more recent specimens, or than birds collected in areas without as much industrialization. This is due to the presence of black carbon particles emitted by factories during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Brown’s research builds and expands on previous work done by DuBay, who studied bird specimens from U.S. museums as a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. That work helped to reconstruct historical levels of soot pollution and provide a better understanding of the role of black carbon’s role in climate change. Those results supported the idea that air at the start of the 20th century was even more polluted than scientists previously believed.

Using photographs of bird specimens from European museums, Brown will use image analysis software and analyze the data to see if it can be ascertained how bad the air pollution was at the time and place the specimens were collected.

Brown’s second project is a broad survey of heavy metal contamination within birds in the United States. Birds become contaminated with heavy metals in a variety of ways, including ingesting substances that contain toxic metals like mercury, cadmium, and lead. The ingestion of lead specifically can cause acute poisoning as it enters the bloodstream, but long-term exposure also causes lead to accumulate permanently in the bones.

“Our goal is to determine how heavy metals like lead move through ecosystems and food webs but also how heavy metal pollution has changed over time and throughout certain industrialized regions,” Brown said.

The bird specimens for this project will come mostly from the Great Lakes region due to its deep industrial history. Specimens will be supplied by the Field Museum in Chicago as well as other large collections.

“We may also use specimens from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which has its own history with heavy metal pollution,” Brown said. “We’re curious to see how pollution has been integrated into our local environment.”

Brown grew up in New York and developed an early fascination with nature. At some point, he said, “I realized that nature is not just interesting, it’s also important, and I found myself wanting to know more about biological and ecological systems.” He enrolled in an environmental science program at Finger Lakes Community College and went on to earn dual bachelor degrees in environmental biology from State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science & Forestry, and Syracuse University.

He received a master’s degree in environmental science and biology from SUNY Brockport in 2013 and worked for several years before enrolling in a Ph.D. program at Texas Tech University. His dissertation focused on detecting and characterizing the microbes that live inside concrete. His goal was to demonstrate that unexpected ecosystems can develop in places that are made specifically by and for humans, he said.

Brown earned his Ph.D. in biology in 2023 and wanted to continue studying urban ecosystems and man-made environments. He saw an ad for a postdoc position in DuBay’s lab focusing on urban ecology and industrial pollution and came to UTA in Fall 2023.

“I am very interested in environmental modification, and I am excited to finally have a chance to focus on pollution,” Brown said. “Every instance of pollution has a story behind it as well as unknown consequences for the future. We’re going to figure out how basic ecology and industrial activities have interacted to produce some of the pollution problems we’re dealing with now.”

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