Above: Arizona tiger salamander (Ambystoma mavortium nebulosum). Photo by Eric Phillips

Murray State University biology professor Howard Whiteman, PhD, has studied the same population of Arizona tiger salamanders (Ambystoma mavortium nebulosum) in the Mexican Cut Preserve north of Gothic since 1990. It’s likely the longest continuous study of this species anywhere, he says. So it says something that he still describes a moment a few years back as a genuine “eureka.” 

Equipped with a simple black box, filtered sunglasses, and an iPhone camera, Whiteman and his research team switched on a specialized flashlight, and a salamander that looked perfectly ordinary in daylight suddenly had a glowing green wash along its back and a stripe near its tail. They knew other salamanders exhibited biofluorescence, but this was the first time they’d tested and seen it at the Cut. “In the same way that we don’t appreciate the ultraviolet light that bees and hummingbirds see, or the way we didn’t appreciate the echolocation bats were using, I think it’s the same kind of thing here,” Whiteman says. “It’s just a new way of sensing the world. We know their retinas are attuned to that wavelength. They’re seeing the world differently than we do.” 

Whether biofluorescence plays a role in finding mates, sizing up a rival, or something else entirely is an open question that Whiteman’s team is pursuing. Just last year, Whiteman’s Murray State student Julianne Chairez figured out that the intensity is environmentally sensitive — it changes depending on the light levels under which the salamanders were raised. This year, working with Georgia Tech undergraduate Katie Stone at RMBL, she began testing whether raising them at different densities has an impact.

Understanding why these salamanders fluoresce is a relatively recent and specific pursuit. Understanding what’s “normal” at the Cut has been a much longer-term and broader effort, tracing back to when RMBL researchers Robert and Scottie Willey first came upon this bowl-shaped basin in 1958 and, recognizing its scientific value, began a years-long effort to protect it. (Today, the preserve is owned by The Nature Conservancy and managed by RMBL.)

The baseline created by watching the same ponds year after year has enabled Whiteman and his students to see evidence of changing behavior in recent years. They watched the salamanders start breeding in the Cut’s higher-elevation ponds (the Upper Cut) for the first time in 2014 or 2015; last year, the salamanders bred in multiple ponds at the Upper Cut, suggesting it’s happening more frequently, he says. This year, for the first time on record, a larva survived two full winters at the Upper Cut before finally metamorphosing. “The realization that climate is more important to their life history than I thought — that was a big one,” Whiteman says as he recounts his top “eureka” moments, many of which he recognized only because he’s watched this population for more than three decades. 

To measure the impact of a changing climate on salamanders more precisely, Whiteman and Kelsey Reider, PhD, an assistant professor at James Madison University who collaborates with Whiteman on salamander physiology, have spent the last several years implanting the animals (some of which can be a foot long and over 30 years old) with small temperature data loggers that record body temperature day and night, through an entire winter under the ice. “Even if we know pond temperatures are shifting,” Reider says, “we don’t actually know what that really means for the animals experiencing them.” As far as she knows, nobody had directly tracked body temperature this way in salamanders before this study, which means the data coming out of this year’s historically low snowpack may be some of the most telling yet. 

The salamanders aren’t the only animals at the Cut whose behavior is diverging from their regular patterns. Hamish Greig, PhD, and Amanda Klemmer, PhD, married aquatic ecologists at the University of Maine, have sampled the Cut’s caddisflies using the same protocol for over two decades, often working side by side and in collaboration with Whiteman’s team. During that time, they’ve watched a formerly lower-elevation caddisfly species move upslope and establish itself here. Greig traces the shift directly to low-snowpack years: In 2021, after two of them in a row, far more individuals than usual completed their full life cycle at the Cut, and the population boomed. Because the species overwinters as a larva instead of sitting out the cold as an egg, its arrival means a surge of large, calorie-rich prey now shows up in these ponds every fall. That’s just when the salamanders need to bulk up before winter. The paedomorphs — the sexually mature, overgrown larvae that stay in the ponds rather than transitioning to terrestrial life — have been “nice and fat and happy” as a result, Greig says. 

Greig sees that kind of finding as the whole point of working somewhere like Mexican Cut. Most of what happens here is basic science, not applied science, he says, and the second depends entirely on the first: “You can’t know why a car is broken, or how to fix it, until you understand how it runs in the first place.” The same logic scales up, he says: Understand an alpine valley like this one well enough, and you start to understand the network of headwaters that feeds the Colorado River, with the aquatic invertebrates, the salamanders, and the wetland plants all part of the same water system. 

Whiteman and Reider will spend the next several years watching how the salamanders fare in the wake of this year’s low snowpack, and what their body-temperature data reveal about it. Meanwhile, Greig and Klemmer will be watching whether the newly arrived caddisfly species raises predation pressure on the species already living here by giving the paedomorphs an edge. “That’s something we want to test in the next few years,” Klemmer says. Some questions get answered in a season. These take longer. And maybe, somewhere along the way, somebody gets to say, “Eureka!” 

Help make the next “eureka” possible. When you join our family of Explorers, you both support this long-term research and get a behind-the-scenes look at RMBL science in the field — including at Mexican Cut.

RMBL principal investigator Benjamin Wong Blonder, PhD, studies how quaking aspens (Populus tremuloides) respond to stress across the high country. This summer’s drought and heat, he writes, are the latest chapter in a longer story: aspen decline that builds slowly, over years of accumulated stress, rather than arriving all at once. Below, he explains what watching the same aspens for over a decade has taught him, and why a single hot, dry summer is easy to notice but hard to fully understand without years of watching what came before.

I’ve been working with quaking aspens in the Gothic area since 2010. This year I took the bus to and from Denver, and had a chance to see trees across the state, in addition to those near Gothic. This summer’s dry and hot weather has not been kind to the aspens anywhere. At lower elevations, I saw many trees with thin-looking canopies, with canopies wholly absent, or with large fungal cankers on their stems.

What I saw this year is probably the consequence of several prior years of challenging conditions. If the climates of the past few years become the new normal, many areas of aspen habitat are going to become increasingly more marginal. The acute stress of this year will actually not play out fully for several years to come. This future is already partially written.

For more on the science behind this, see:

‘Climate lags and genetics determine phenology in quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides),’ Blonder et al., 2023, New Phytologist. Read the paper →
and
‘Cytotype and Genotype Predict Mortality and Recruitment in Colorado Quaking Aspen,’ Blonder et al., 2021, Ecological Applications. Read the paper →

RMBL Scientists Visit Expanding Youth Programs

Driving into Gothic on a July afternoon, visitors immediately notice the crags of Gothic Mountain, chest-high monument plants, and roving researchers carrying nets and binoculars. As common as the deer grazing in the protected townsite meadows, a growing number of much younger scientists have brought their own questions to this community of curiosity.

For decades, RMBL Youth Programs (YP) has connected K–12 students directly to ecological research through immersive outdoor science education in Gothic. From K–2 Nature Camp and grades 3–5 Science Camp to middle school Project Eco-STEM and a high school field biology course, RMBL YP offers a progression of hands-on experiences that immerse students in cutting-edge ecological research.

What sets RMBL Youth Programs apart from traditional environmental education camps? Students are paired with scientists and become part of the research process.

“One of the most rewarding parts of my work at RMBL is connecting research scientists and their teams with the youth participating in our programs,” said Youth Programs Manager Katie Lawn. “These interactions help make a career in science feel attainable while giving campers and students the unique opportunity to learn directly from researchers in the field.”

This summer offered numerous examples of these scientist-student connections. Researchers including Katya Kochvar, Nick Dabagia, Sophia Todorov, billy barr, Travis Rainey, and Drs. Howard Whiteman, David Inouye, Dan Blumstein, and Mick Demi introduced young RMBLers to the methods and technologies used to study hummingbirds, aquatic ecosystems, snowpack, marmots, bumblebees, salamanders, and landscape-scale ecological change.

In 2025, Youth Programs groups had 45 guest scientist visits that reached more than 615 students year-round. In 2026, the program is already off to a strong start, with 23 guest scientist visits reaching 310 students. During the school year, RMBL hosts visiting schools in Gothic and also brings programming to schools in Gunnison and Crested Butte. Participation doubled beginning in 2022. RMBL now serves approximately 800 K-12 students annually, including roughly 600 students from rural Colorado schools. In 2025, RMBL hosted Gunnison Middle School students from the district’s Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education (CLDE) program.

“For our youngest campers and students,” Lawn continued, “a visit might be a fun ‘show-and-tell’ experience, like meeting a scientist, exploring cool research tools and discovering what it’s like to study the natural world in a question-and-answer format. As students get older, those interactions become more experiential (such as a hike up to billy barr’s cabin to meet him and tour his weather station or a visit to David Inouye’s cabin to observe hummingbird banding).” Ultimately, students who stay with RMBL Youth Programs through the High School Introduction to Biology field course “work alongside researchers in the field, ask scientific questions, collect data and receive mentorship as they carry out their own research projects.”

RMBL Youth Programs also provides early career experience for a group of science education professionals, college students and recent college graduates from across the Gunnison Valley. This year’s team manifested the deep commitment of RMBL educators, with all teachers from last summer returning.

One of RMBL’s most impressive qualities is its sense of wonder. Regardless of their pedigree or decades of experience, RMBL principal investigators often light up more when they say, “Here is what we still do not know,” than when they say, “Here is what we know.”

The philosopher Socrates defined wisdom as knowing what one does not know. By that measure, RMBL has no shortage of wisdom. While many environmental education programs focus on what is known about a place, RMBL Youth Programs does that while also inviting young scientists into a process of curiosity centered on what remains unknown. In turn, RMBL is renewed by the awe and curiosity of young people joining the patient work of understanding. Grounded in the wisdom of the land, strengthened by ecological methods and tools, and enriched by multigenerational study, RMBL offers a model of long-term environmental wisdom.

As Katie Lawn concluded, “There’s something especially meaningful about sparking curiosity and building those connections across generations and expertise levels, especially while exploring nature together.”

 — John Hausdoerffer, PhD
Director of Story and Advancement
Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

Top: “Weather Wizard” billy barr modeling his weather station for RMBL campers 

A ray of mid-May Gothic sun cut through a light snow shower in 2025 as I visited RMBL research scientist Ian Breckheimer, PhD, and Western Colorado University Paul M. Rady School of Computer Science and Engineering students just north of the Visitor Center. The Rady team had partnered with RMBL since 2024 to identify and create technologies that fit the needs of RMBL scientists.

Rady students were setting up the first prototype drone launchpad to help RMBL scientists understand what tree leaves experience in the forest canopy, in order to understand the role of evapotranspiration in forecasting streamflow. Now, over a year later, on a late June day in a much-drier Gothic, Breckheimer imagines partnerships extending from the Rady School to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories to companies like Airborne Snow Observatories. Such partnerships are vital to forecasting snowpack, wildfires, wildflowers, and streamflow, empowering decision-makers (also key partners) with sharper foresight for a more resilient West and world.

“The strength of RMBL over the past century has been in bringing researchers together across disciplines to answer major scientific questions,” Breckheimer says. ”Now, we hope to be more deliberate in finding new collaborations to enhance the social impact of our science.”

In the past year, RMBL has embarked on a global journey to grow partnerships that enhance RMBL field science with complementary scientific disciplines and emerging technologies, extend public awareness and impact of RMBL science, and bring diverse ways of knowing to how RMBL fulfills its mission of sustaining “our quality of life by accelerating discoveries about the ecosystems that replenish the world’s air, water, and food supply,” far beyond our 2028 centennial.

Enhancing Field Science

The new RMBL 365 has been key to such partnerships. In March, RMBL hosted scientists and leaders partnering with us on a million-dollar NASA grant to reflect and plan on how to use remote sensing to improve drought responses in the Gunnison Basin.

Reflecting Breckheimer’s philosophy of welcoming new community partners into interactive RMBL research, his team has launched a number of ways to interact with our scientific findings:  a Data Hub, complete with a Wildflower Bloom Forecast and a RMBL Knowledge Commons.

A June visit from faculty and students in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Aerospace Engineering Sciences Program highlighted the growing potential to combine satellite technologies, remote sensing, and RMBL’s unparalleled long-term ecological datasets. The collaboration could create powerful new tools for tracking and predicting environmental change. RMBL Executive Director Dr. Jeni Blacklock commented, “The most exciting scientific breakthroughs happen when people with different backgrounds come together around a shared purpose. By connecting engineers, ecologists, hydrologists, data scientists, and community partners, we can better understand the Earth as a living, interconnected system and accelerate scientific discovery through collaboration.”

Extending Public Awareness

RMBL 365 has also allowed us to open doors to the local community more than ever. Our monthly “RMBL Reads” partnership with Townie Books and the RMBL Visitor Center has featured books that inspire RMBL staff members and scientists. Since January, we have discussed books on Jane Goodall, the craft of wood heat, the personhood of rivers, the existence or nonexistence of fish as a distinct group, and the nature of fear. 

RMBL Reads will continue to invite the community in partnership with Townie Books each month, while our “Après Science” lectures will continue to invite the public to wrestle with the regional implications of RMBL findings, such as two packed-house presentations from Dr. David Inouye and Breckheimer this past winter — fulfilling the RMBL 365 promise of year-round scientific discussion.

Beyond Gothic research and 365 collaborations, our partnerships have reached far beyond the valley. This past March, Communications Manager Suzanne Ennis and I joined colleagues from the Telluride Institute at the Seventh Global Meeting of the United Nations Mountain Partnership in Andorra. Over fifty global nations shared mountain-based research from all continents, discussed best practices in translating science into resilience for mountain communities, and signed the “Andorra Declaration” calling for global mountain communities to cooperate in meeting UN Sustainable Development Goals and to offer wisdom on ecological health, cultural heritage, and economic prosperity for all communities downstream. 

At the UN meeting, we connected with scientists, government leaders, and environmental advocates working at the source of major watersheds — from Kenya to Chile to France to Tajikistan. Since then, Dr. Pato Moreno (Chilean-based UNESCO Chair in Mountain Heritage and the Biosphere) requested a RMBL visit to discuss partnerships and to conduct research (welcoming all RMBL researchers to her field station in Chile). In May, RMBL officially joined the UN Mountain Partnership.

According to a UN document entitled Why Mountains Matter, “mountains cover about 27% of the earth’s land surface and host 25 of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Mountains supply freshwater to an estimated half of humanity.” Sixty percent of all water consumed by humans — in the food-energy-water nexus — starts in mountains. 

Telluride Institute leader Tucker Symkowicz recalled a particularly compelling comment at the UN meeting from Dr. Hugo Mantilla-Meluk, Colombian director of the Center for Highland Studies at the University of Quindio, who “reminded us that while mountains have frequently been used as boundaries, they are actually places of connection that require and benefit from collaboration, sharing, and respect.” RMBL has also begun planning with Telluride Institute a series of conversations among mountain-focused nonprofits in the region — at RMBL 365 — about the relationship between science and community decision-making on the Western Slope. 

RMBL staff have also joined the Protect Our Winters Science Alliance. This June, I attended the POW Leadership Summit in Glacier National Park, Montana. At the summit, I presented on the power of story to elevate data, including RMBL’s snow-based findings from the record-dry winter of 2026–27. Whether sharing a raft, a panel, or a meal with other POW members, I enjoyed building RMBL-POW connections with snow scientists, snow-based nonprofits, and major foundations and companies dedicated to addressing climate disruptions to persistent snowpack. They had all heard of RMBL and were very enthusiastic about collaborating with RMBL. Since then, POW and RMBL are exploring a major gathering of the POW Science Alliance Members at RMBL 365 to reflect on how better to empower POW advocates with accurate and compelling (and, when the evidence calls for it, quite complicated) data.

Convening Diverse Ways of Knowing

Partnerships translate RMBL science from rigorous peer-reviewed research into pragmatic public conversations about a more livable planet. Partnerships expand the collaborations and reach necessary for drawing new kinds of intellectual, social, and financial capital. Partnerships extend the “RMBL atmosphere” of Gothic and RMBL 365 beyond summer, filling our spaces with dynamic discourse and generating revenue for basic science at RMBL. Partnerships inspire new questions — or dynamic ways to explore continuing questions — here in Gothic. Finally, as we have seen over the years in endeavors such as Dr. Paul CaraDonna and Mark Dorf’s Art/Science Exchange, partnerships open space for diverse ways of knowing to come together at RMBL (don’t miss their event in the Majestic Theatre, July 10 at 8 p.m.).

In the past year, Western Colorado University disciplines encompassing biology, business, philosophy, music, environment & sustainability, history, and film have collaborated with RMBL on translating scientific research into higher education experiences. In May, eight Western professors from numerous disciplines stayed at 365 for a long weekend dedicated to helping busy university teachers meet their research, writing, and creative deadlines. Western Professor Kimberly shared that “RMBL 365 provided everything we hoped it would: a quiet, productive, welcoming, and deeply restorative space. Faculty from across disciplines made real progress on their work while also building community in a setting that could not have been more ideal.”

In early June, eight RMBL staff and scientists visited the Ute Mountain Ute Bear Dance in Towaoc, Colorado. Over the past two summers, Ute elders such as Regina Lopez Whiteskunk have visited RMBL to help us think about the enhanced inclusivity and intellectual curiosity that would come from welcoming Ute neighbors and Ute ways of knowing into RMBL more explicitly. In return, RMBL scientists visited the Bear Dance during a time in which climate change is disrupting the sacred plants traditionally needed for a successful ceremony. 

In early August, Ute Mountain Elders will come back to RMBL to share plant knowledge and to consider how to navigate the spiritual as well as the resource disturbances of the climate crisis. This is not just a partnership of plant knowledge and climate crisis understanding; this is a partnership of how humans, across cultures, know climate disturbance and how to address it.

Extending our conversations with Indigenous and Western science intersections, Peruvian Indigenous art-science advocate Patsy Craig is co-launching a new field station in Peru with local tribes, has already visited Gothic for advice, and plans to volunteer for RMBL the entire month of August 2026 to learn more (she’ll live in RMBL 365).

Getting Creative

On July 1, RMBL, Dr. Dan Blumstein’s marmot laboratory, and Irwin Brewing Co. will launch a new “Marmot Tears IPA,” raising awareness about RMBL research. Although summer 2026 research is not complete, the marmot population has dropped from over 150 to under 75 in and around Gothic since summer 2025. This is due to low snowpack taking away the insulating blanket of winter that keeps marmots warm in their burrows and the March melt causing vulnerability to predators due to early emergence. Yet on July 1, RMBL will lead a toast in Crested Butte’s Public House — a toast to the parts and processes of the natural world that sustains us, to the species with which we evolved, to the long-term research necessary for living well with fellow species and systems, and to the evolving and creative partnerships necessary to advancing RMBL’s locally focused and globally relevant ecology of place.

As RMBL board president Dr. Berry Brosi concluded, “Science doesn’t advance in isolation, and neither does RMBL. From large-scale collaborations with NASA to statewide initiatives with the Rady School and CU Boulder, all the way down to our tight local partnerships with Irwin Brewing and Townie Books, every relationship we build extends the reach and impact of the work happening in and around Gothic. Partnerships are how a small field station in the Rockies helps answer big questions — and how the discoveries we make here find their way back into the communities and conversations that need them most.” 

— John Hausdoerffer, PhD
RMBL Director of Story and Advancement

Top: Dr. Ian Breckheimer (foreground) and Western Colorado University Paul Rady School of Engineering student Jayden Omi

Evolutionary Ecologist Diane Campbell and Design Researcher Eliza Collin Simulate the Future at RMBL

Three years ago, during a residency at the Design Museum in London, design researcher Eliza Collin was developing a new project about olfactory evolution and looking for scientists studying how climate change affects the scent of flowers. Her search led her to evolutionary ecologist Diane Campbell, who has been conducting research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) since 1984. The resulting collaboration has grown from a series of conversations across the Atlantic into an ongoing partnership spanning evolutionary ecology, design, film, and science communication.

Simulating the Future

At RMBL, Campbell has spent decades studying scarlet gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata) and related wildflowers, building one of the longest-running data sets of its kind.

“I study how plants evolve under real conditions in nature, and I’ve looked at that from a variety of angles over the last 40 years out at RMBL,” she says. 

During that time, she and her students have studied everything from pollinators’ responses to flower traits —  such as the flowers’ shape, scent, and nectar — to how leaf shape and the ability to photosynthesize affect survival. 

“What we’re working on now is how changes in environmental conditions as a result of climate change alter the way that plants look because of direct responses to the environment or because of evolution. We have roughly a 25-year data set on natural selection and changes in leaf and flower traits,” Campbell says. “One thing we know is that earlier snowmelt is endangering the populations.”

Among the central questions now is whether plants can evolve quickly enough to survive those increasingly challenging conditions.

“It’s called evolutionary rescue,” Campbell explains. “It’s literally evolution rescuing the population from poor environmental conditions.”

When Collin reached out to Campbell, Campbell was in her last term of teaching before retiring from the University of California, Irvine. With her schedule about to become more flexible, Campbell found herself increasingly interested in expanding the audience for her research, so Collin’s timing was fortuitous. “I thought I would really like to do something that connected a little more with the wider public,” she says.

Campbell did more than share her expertise with Collin. “She introduced me to a new way of doing science,” says Collin. “She was simulating the future outside of the lab! Due to collaborations with other scientists, I was already thinking about how scent was changing and whether we could smell the difference. But Diane’s research was uniquely impressive. With that much data, maybe we could also see these changes if we modeled her findings into future scenarios.”

In the months that followed, Collin worked with Campbell, animator Alexander Pannier, botanical illustrator Jessica Francis, and other scientists to create a multimedia installation that invited visitors to see how an Ipomopsis hybrid might evolve over the next century in response to a changing climate. The work was displayed alongside an installation that imagined how the scents of species of Jasminum and Campanula would change with increased heat and drought conditions, and a garden plan designed to enable resilience in plant species through gene exchange and potential hybridization.

Video: 100-Year Evolution of the Ipomopsis Hybrid (2024), a collaboration among Eliza Collin, Dr. Diane Campbell, Jessica Francis, and Alexander Pannier. Video courtesy of Eliza Collin

From London to Gothic

Thousands of museumgoers were introduced to Collin and Campbell’s collaboration through the London exhibit, yet Collin had never set foot in Colorado, nor had Campbell visited the Design Museum. The collaboration expanded after Collin visited RMBL for the first time two summers ago. She and her partner landed in Gothic after a road trip through the American Southwest, pitching a tent in a meadow.

“We arrived just as the sun was going down. No one was around, so we set up our tent in this big wildflower meadow in full bloom where the pitch sites are. This turned out to be one of Diane’s research meadows,” she says.

What she found at RMBL struck her profoundly.

“There’s this shared energy toward something bigger,” she says. “It’s wonderful — like some kind of utopia.”

Although Collin’s visit lasted just a few days, the experience led to a deeper partnership with Campbell and scientist Paul CaraDonna, founder of RMBL’s Art/Science Exchange. Since 2013, the exchange has brought together artists and scientists to explore how their collaboration can broaden understanding of, and engagement with, nature. For Collin, the exchange has created space for conversations that might not happen in more traditional research settings.

“I’ve felt so well received, and really inspired, and really supported, and the scientists have been really open to my point of view,” she says.

Last summer, Collin returned with a small film crew (including writer-director Federico Barni) to document Campbell’s work studying hybrid wildflowers around Gothic. The result is an ongoing semi-fictional film project that blends documentary footage with a narrative set in the future. Shot on 16-mm film and filled with scientists collecting floral scent samples and studying hybrid plants at high-elevation research sites, the film imagines a future narrator reflecting on the research taking place at RMBL today. At its center is Campbell’s search to understand whether plants can adapt quickly enough to survive a changing climate.

“It’s absolute visual gold dust, watching scientists doing their work,” Collin says.

During that visit, Collin also conducted a workshop with undergraduate students and several principal investigators. “We collectively imagined what they thought the future was going to be like, based on their research,” Collin says. “Their research is very situated within a future, but they don’t necessarily have the opportunity to stop and think, ‘What is that future going to be like?'” For Collin, that kind of reflection is one of the really valuable contributions artists can make to scientific research. She says artists — and, in her case, designers — can help scientists think beyond a single project and consider how their work connects to larger social, cultural, and environmental questions while also contributing to the future of design.

For Campbell, the collaboration has certainly offered a fresh perspective. “It does make me think a lot more about how to present [my research] to non-scientists, and what sorts of things people might be interested in,” she says. It has also planted seeds for their continued collaboration. “The populations themselves are changing, and so the whole feel of the meadow is different. I think it would be interesting to try to capture that visually,” she muses.

Collin plans to return to RMBL this July for a two-week stay. While her first visit was brief and her second focused on film production, she says she is eager to experience more time in the field, doing hands-on science. She and CaraDonna are also discussing a new workshop focused on ecological futures, building on conversations about how scientists think about the future worlds their research seeks to understand.

“RMBL is an incredibly unique place, the way it’s exploring art/science,” Collin says. “I’m having conversations with other scientists around the world now, and RMBL’s reputation for this kind of thing precedes itself, and people are excited to see how it develops, and [want] to model it. I think that’s really a testament to the great work that RMBL is doing.”

— Suzanne Ennis
RMBL Communications Manager

Top: Eliza Collin (left) and Diane Campbell. Photo courtesy of Eliza Collin

Josh Grinath and the power of place-based discovery

On a summer morning near Gothic, before most of the valley stirs, ecologist Josh “Bear” Grinath is already thinking about questions that stretch far beyond any single field site: How do pollution and predators shape communities of plants and animals? What might those interactions portend for the future?

Rooted in careful observation, long-term data, and a deep respect for the complexity of mountain ecosystems, Josh’s work at RMBL exemplifies why place-based science matters and how sustained inquiry shapes our understanding of a rapidly changing world.

Science that begins with place

Underlying Josh’s research is a simple premise: to understand how ecosystems respond to change, we must first understand how they function over time.

Now an associate professor of community and global change ecology at Idaho State University, Josh was a first-generation college graduate from Cornell University when he first came to RMBL in 2004. Over four summers, he worked as a research assistant for science director Jennie Reithel and then-executive director Ian Billick, contributing to research on mutualisms between ants and sap-feeding treehoppers.

Those observations led to his own hypotheses and to graduate school at Florida State University, where he worked with RMBL researchers Brian Inouye and Nora Underwood. He has continued his research at RMBL ever since.

That research now centers on two primary lines of inquiry. The first focuses on nitrogen pollution’s impact on ecosystems. For 16 summers at a field site in nearby Almont, Josh has simulated low-level but widespread nitrogen pollution on plots of vegetation, herbivorous insects, and predatory arthropods, including ants. What began as a graduate project studying short-term impacts has evolved into a long-term investigation of ecological consequences.

Recently, he coordinated with RMBL’s Colorado Headwaters Ecological Spectroscopy Study (CHESS) to test whether hyperspectral imaging can detect plant-insect communities impacted by nitrogen pollution. He also plans to collaborate with colleagues to investigate how nitrogen deposition affects plant-pollinator interactions.

His second line of inquiry focuses on how bears indirectly benefit plants by eating ants and altering relationships between ants, sap-sucking insects, and plants. He established an ant population survey area in 2013 and has resumed the study in recent years, collaborating with researchers from partner institutions. He is also interested in expanding this survey using drone imagery.

These processes unfold slowly, with patterns emerging across years — sometimes decades. This is where RMBL’s strength shines. Founded in 1928, the lab provides a rare setting where decades of continuous data, consistent field sites, and a collaborative scientific culture allow researchers like Josh to ask questions that short-term studies simply cannot answer.

From data to impact

The impact of Josh’s science isn’t limited to academic journals. Land managers, conservation organizations, and fellow scientists rely on long-term, data-driven insight.

“By studying bears and their interactions with ants, my work helps uncover the ecological roles of bears in ecosystems and inform the management of bear populations,” Josh says. “[It’s also] been used to inform agencies [about] the potential indirect effects of removing bears from landscapes.”

Similarly, his study of nitrogen pollution provides insight into landscape changes that have already occurred, and those that may still lie ahead, including changes to plant quality and to plant and insect species that could become pests.

At RMBL, uncertainty is not a weakness; it is an invitation to look more closely, ask better questions, and remain open to complexity. That approach helps build trust and bridge the gap between scientific discovery and public understanding.

A scientist shaped by community

RMBL is not just a place where Josh conducts research. It is a community that shapes how that research happens.

In Josh’s view, that community has shaped his career. From early support by Jennie Reithel and Ian Billick to mentorship from Brian Inouye and Nora Underwood, and continued collaboration and fellowship support, RMBL has played a central role in his development as a scientist and his ongoing work.

This culture of belonging is why scientists return year after year — and why the science produced here carries unusual depth and continuity.

Educating the next generation through science

A key part of Josh’s impact is his role in education and mentorship. At RMBL, students are not observers; they are active participants in the scientific process, learning how to collect data, ask questions, and think critically about the natural world. “I have had wonderful opportunities to work with undergraduate students attending RMBL’s summer program, which has helped to take my research in new directions,” Josh says.

By involving students directly in long-term research, Josh helps cultivate a new generation of scientists who understand the value of patience, collaboration, and place-based inquiry.

Why this work matters now

In an era of rapid environmental change, there is often pressure for quick answers and immediate solutions. RMBL’s long-term datasets provide a foundation for more thoughtful, informed action.

As RMBL moves toward its second century, research like Josh’s underscores why the lab matters. It is about building knowledge to understand how human activities are reshaping ecosystems and to navigate an uncertain future.

As Josh puts it, “By constructing this knowledge, we can identify ways to address the environmental challenges that we have made, protecting natural environments along with the ecosystem services that humanity depends upon.”

— Jeni Blacklock, PhD
RMBL Executive Director

Top: Josh “Bear” Grinath in Almont. Photo | Courtesy Josh Grinath

On March 13, 2026, longtime RMBL scientist Paul Ehrlich, PhD, passed away in Palo Alto, California, at age 93. Paul was an eminent biologist who wrote or co-authored more than 1,100 scientific papers and articles and over 50 books, many with his wife, Anne. The following tribute, written by RMBL scientist and board member Dan Blumstein, accompanied a Scott Wissinger Lifetime Service Award presented to Paul and Anne last year in recognition of their significant contributions to RMBL.  

In honor of Paul’s passion for science and his longstanding support of RMBL, the family asks that donations be made to RMBL in his memory. 

Paul and Anne Ehrlich first arrived at RMBL in the summer of 1960 with their four-year-old daughter, Lisa, in tow. Paul was an assistant professor of biology at Stanford University, looking for a site where he could continue his long-term studies on the evolution of butterflies in the summer. Anne was his assistant, working primarily as a biological illustrator. She spent long hours dissecting butterfly genitalia under the microscope and drawing what she saw. In those early days, Paul spent time studying Erebia epipsodea, a common Alpine butterfly, and a variety of “little blues,” lycaenid butterflies common in the RMBL area. Studying the latter, Paul and his plant biologist colleague Peter Raven discovered an evolutionary interaction between the lycaenid butterflies and their lupine food plants: the plants had evolved a poison to prevent herbivory by the lycaenid caterpillars, but the butterflies, in turn, evolved enzymes to break down the poison. Subsequent generations of the plant evolved a slightly different poison resistant to the enzymes, and then later generations of the butterflies evolved more successful enzymes. In their landmark paper, “Butterflies and Plants: A Study in Coevolution,” published jointly in 1964, Ehrlich and Raven coined the term “coevolution” and launched a major new line of evolutionary research.  

For their first summer, the Ehrlichs lived in Oh Be Joyful, but soon concluded that if they wanted to spend many summers at RMBL, they should build a cabin of their own. In the summer of 1961, they broke ground for the “Ehrlich cabin.” From 1960 until their final year at RMBL (2017), when the altitude became too challenging for Anne’s asthma, they missed only two summers — when they were on sabbatical in Australia. During those two summers, 1965 and 1966, the cabin was used by Ken Armitage and his family before they built their own in South Gothic. Ken had been on Paul’s PhD committee at the University of Kansas, and they had become good friends. Ken was trying to get some long-term research going at Flathead Lake and was running into difficulties, so Paul suggested he come to Gothic. Thus began another very successful long-term association for RMBL. 

They were outspoken advocates for modernization of the laboratories at RMBL, and Anne served on the RMBL Board of Trustees from 1989 to 1999. Paul recruited highly recognized colleagues to RMBL, including Ken Armitage, Michael Soulé, John and Cheri Holdren, John and Mel Harte, Steve Schneider, Peter Brussard, Cheri Holdren, and Greg Florant. Paul also organized the first class ever taught at RMBL featuring prominent evolutionary biologists as instructors, including John Holdren, Joan Roughgarden, and other internationally known colleagues. 

Paul and Anne’s passion to protect the environment was fed every year by their time at Gothic. Paul gave a public lecture in Crested Butte during many summers that was well attended by people from Crested Butte and Gunnison, bringing notoriety to the RMBL and inspiring the public to be active in conservation. In addition, they are highly regarded for their books and publications, many inspired by work done in Gothic, and recognized globally as important contributions to national conservation attention and policy. 

— Professor Daniel T. Blumstein
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
University of California, Los Angeles

The East River carves a perfect “S” just before it flows between the base of Gothic Mountain and a treehouse named “Bean Pod.” Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) scientists constructed this treehouse one year after the organization was founded in 1928. The 5-by-10-foot shack clings to a small hill on one end and two spruce trees on the other. Inside sits a small desk and a simple twin bed, under an archway of Christmas lights. A window over the bed frames an idyllic view of Gothic Mountain’s lower crags. 

Facilities Manager Benn Schmatz brought me here in my new role as director of storytelling for RMBL. I am already daunted by the countless stories that have shaped this place. Like a watershed with many tributaries, RMBL is a storyshed. Every being here — across millennia, cultures, and species — offers its own tributary, its own story. Bean Pod is no exception, with hundreds of users reaching back to when, according to a RMBL publication, “a ‘Miss Bean’ was the first person to spend the summer in it.”

Stream ecologist Bobbi Peckarsky stayed in Bean Pod for three summers, 1976-1978. She says she remembers when the lab’s then-director (Chris Johnson, son of founders Vera Adams Johnson and John C. Johnson) first showed her the shack. 

“He was kind of embarrassed,” Peckarsky tells me. “He thought I was going to think it was awful. I went right through the cabin to the deck, and I looked out. I thought, ‘This is awesome! There’s Gothic Mountain. There’s the East River.’ I loved it.” 

Peckarsky and three colleagues later held “the first women’s happy hour on that deck, which probably was very unsafe,” she recalls. “Four of us went out on that deck with gin and tonics.” She has since returned to Gothic every summer for her work on interactions among stream invertebrates, especially mayflies, and the extent to which they thrive and nourish life as temperatures warm. Peckarsky’s team studying “the Benthos” (Greek for watery bottom-dwellers) was known as “The Sensuous Benthettes.” 

“We had these wonderful black knee-high boots that a colleague joked looked very sensuous,” she says. “We used to wear them in the Fourth of July parade and twirl our bug-catching nets.” 

Peckarsky’s RMBL experience contrasted with her life back at Cornell, where she was the first woman hired in the entomology department. 

“For a woman scientist to have kids, it was, ‘How are you going to maintain your academic excellence while you’re a mom?’ Just watch me,” she says  

I ask Peckarsky why RMBL was so much more inclusive. 

“Something about the shared simple lifestyle selects for the kind of people that are inclusive and accepting,” she replies.

Carol Boggs adds to Peckarsky’s answer. Boggs first arrived to study butterflies in 1978. She has missed only two summers since. 

“RMBL is not associated with a university, so people have to work together to keep it going,” Boggs says. “That has meant including women as partners. Wives of early researchers helped keep the lab running day-to-day. RMBL is founded on caring for each other, caring about science, together.” 

Harriet Barclay joined RMBL in its earliest days. Her herbarium now holds almost 12,000 specimens from the Gunnison Basin, dating back to 1929. Plant ecologist Jean Langenheim — the second female president of the Ecological Society of America — conducted research at RMBL.

From 1958 through the late twentieth century, Ruth “Scottie” Willey (one of Harvard’s first female PhDs in biology) worked as an aquatic biologist at RMBL. According to former RMBL Executive Director Ian Billick, she and her husband, Bob, along with attorney Pete Klingsmith, developed the concept of non-consumptive water rights, “for which RMBL stream ecologists and Colorado fly fishermen will be forever grateful,” Billick says.  

Willey famously climbed into the cab of a bulldozer and convinced the driver not to dig into the Mexican Cut Preserve. Billick adds that this history runs deeper than RMBL, with a “strong tradition” of women in botany that dated back to the 1800s. 

“They had to work at field stations because there was less support structure for women at universities,” Billick says.  

The legacy of leadership continues. Jennie Reithel has been RMBL’s science director since 2007, and arrived at the lab in 1993. Jeni Blacklock is the new executive director, and is developing collaborations within RMBL and with other organizations that advance science and research. 

“It’s inspiring to see how generations of women have shaped RMBL through collaboration, curiosity, and leadership,” Blacklock says. “Their legacy continues to guide how we build inclusive spaces for science to thrive — today and for the next 100 years.”

 Mairead Brogan studied under Peckarsky at RMBL for six years, starting when she graduated from high school in 2018. Now a PhD student at Northern Arizona University, Brogan finds the number of women in their sixth decade of research at RMBL to be part of the field station’s secret. 

“You have quite a few strong, later-career women who have been very successful in science,” she says. “That representation matters, and it is empowering.” 

After reflecting on Brogan’s next-generation commitment to place-based, policy-informing science, I can’t help but think of a 1996 Langenheim article on women in ecology, in which Langenheim hoped “that there would be no further need to discuss the contributions of women ecologists because we would be recognized just as ecologists.” 

Have we, partly because of RMBL, reached that point in science and society?

I want my daughters to feel this tradition of empowerment. So Atalaya, then 17, and I head to Bean Pod. Atalaya’s eyes open wide at how the tiny shack stands against the massive Gothic Mountain backdrop. She starts taking photos of Bean Pod from all angles. I give her space as she walks down to the river to photograph Bean Pod from below. 

I enter the treehouse and am drawn to a bit of writing penciled on the white plaster wall: “She was here.” 

— John Hausdoerffer
Director of Story and Advancement
Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

(A version of this article first appeared in the Gunnison Country Times online, May 28, 2025)