News and Achievements

The cover of the October 2026 journal issue of Ecological Applications features research by SBS associate professor Tanya Cheeke, investigating how microbial inoculations can help with native prairie restoration.

Washington State University’s resident feline scientist, Dr. Universe, answers a question from Bella, 7, of Arizona: Why don’t we eat reptile eggs?

That’s the conclusion of the first-ever comprehensive report on the fate of butterflies, released last year by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and led by Cheryl Schultz, a conservation biologist at Washington State University.

This summer, students from around the country are at WSU to address some of the most pressing questions facing aquatic ecosystems, from disease outbreaks and environmental stress to improving the resilience of species that are vital to Washington’s economy, ecology, and heritage. 

That’s a key finding of new research from Washington State University Vancouver showing that hatchery-raised fall Chinook salmon that started life in noise-protected environments were more likely to complete the journey to the ocean and back than fish raised in noisy ones.

Researchers at WSU have identified a key cluster of genes that can be moved from rhizobia bacteria that harvest nitrogen into bacteria that don’t — raising the possibility that microbes that dwell in cereal crops could eventually be engineered to atmospherically harvest nitrogen as well.