Like bugs? Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at natural history museums? Interested in helping scientists understand our changing environment? These are just some of the reasons why people should join a project led by UC Berkeley’s Essig Museum of Entomology.

The Hawaiian Islands are a unique and ongoing series of evolutionary and ecological experiments. As each volcano rises above the waves, it is colonized by life from neighboring volcanoes and develops its own flora and fauna.

Scientists at UC Berkeley have launched a unique program, the Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology, to use hindcasting – “predicting” what happened during past episodes of climate change – to improve the reliability and accuracy of computer models that forecast how plants and animals will adapt to a changing planet.

UC Berkeley researchers have found evidence that leafflower trees and leafflower moths, two species that are mutually dependent upon each other, managed to colonize South Pacific islands separately, and then reconnect again. The findings contradict a long-standing belief in island biology that highly specialized organisms cannot establish themselves on remote islands.