Fargo, N.D. ––  Jason Harmon, assistant professor of entomology in the School of Natural Resource Sciences at NDSU, is a principal investigator on a five-year, $1.97 million collaborative National Science Foundation grant titled “The Role of Taxonomic, Functional, Genetic and Landscape Diversity in Food Web Responses to a Changing Environment.”

The research is centered on aphid pests and will study food webs to understand various dimensions of biodiversity and their impacts on ecosystem resilience under the context of agricultural systems. Collaborators include scientists from the University of Wisconsin and University of Georgia.

The research in Harmon’s proposal is funded by National Science Foundation’s Division of Environmental Biology grant award No. 1241031. The NDSU portion of the grant is $320,125.

NDSU is recognized as one of the nation’s top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.