Stephenson Awarded Grant for Research in Australia

Steve Stephenson, a research professor in the department of biological sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas, has been awarded a grant of $30,000 from the Australian Biological Resources Study's National Taxonomy Research Grant Program in support of a project titled “Studies of the Eumycetozoans of Australia” that will be carried out in Australia over a period of three years.

The grant will provide $10,000 in funding for each of the three years (2012, 2013 and 2014). The purpose of the project is to obtain the basic inventory data needed to produce a monograph on the myxomycetes (plasmodial slime molds) of Australia and also to obtain additional data on the dictyostelids (cellular slime molds) in a region of the world where they are an understudied group of organisms.

Stephenson began studying the myxomycetes of Australia in 1995 and has since made a number of collecting trips to various parts of both mainland Australia and Tasmania. He has already written a major portion of the proposed monograph but still needs to do additional survey work in northwestern Australia, south central Australia and the high-elevation areas of New South Wales and Queensland. Each of the three collecting trips will be directed towards one of these regions.

Stephenson is the author of a monograph on the myxomycetes of New Zealand (published in 2003), and the latter is expected to serve as a model for the Australian monograph.