The Biology Department is updating their requirements for the B.A. and B.S. majors starting Fall 2023. See the Degree Requirements page and up coming department events for more information.

Biology faculty and graduate students partner in PICANTE!, an NSF grant with international collaboration to create a predictive model for emerging pandemics.

Members of the Witt Lab and colleagues from the Centro de Ornitología y Biodiversidad pose for a final team photo after a successful field season to study Giant Hummingbird migration and blood physiology in central Peru. Pictured from left to right: Marlon Chagua, Jessie Williamson, Kyana Montoya, and Emil Bautista. Photo: Yoselin Bautista.

Experiments in the Teakettle Experimental Forest in the southern Sierra Nevada in California help inform state efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Hurteau Lab is quantifying the effects of catchment-scale burning on forest carbon dynamics in an old growth mixed-conifer forest.

Students in UNM Mammalogy course experience hands-on fieldwork led by faculty and graduate students, such as Antonia Androski (left). Photo by: Diana Macias

Since 2005, the Collins lab has been studying the effects of fire, herbivory and climate variability on grassland structure and function in Kruger National Park, South Africa, in collaboration with colleagues in the US, South African National Parks, and the University of KwaZulu Natal.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research Project is an interdisciplinary study of the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in a cold desert region of Antarctica. The Takacs-Vesbach lab utilizes this site to see how lake communities and geochemistries change through the year. Pictured are Emily Reynebeau of UNM (right) and Krista Myers of LSU (left).

Using long-term ecological data to reveal the response of semi-arid ecosystems to fluctuations and change in environmental conditions, the Sevilleta LTER was established at UNM in 1988

Welcome to UNM Biology

With classes and research spanning genes to ecosystems and beyond, we are home to major research programs like the Museum of Southwestern Biology, the Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research Program (LTER), the Center for Evolutionary and Theoretical Immunology (CETI), and New Mexico Natural Heritage.

As a leader in funded research and scholarly productivity, our graduate and undergraduate students learn about research by doing it.

Undergraduate training programs in the department like U-RISE at UNM, the PREP at UNM program, and the Sevilleta REU sites program, as well as Graduate training programs like the Museum Research Traineeship, provide additional opportunities for students to engage with research.

Please look around to see all of the activity across our department and find a place for your own study of Biology!