About the Nebraska Lectures
The Office of Research and Innovation partners with the Office of the Chancellor and the Research Council, in collaboration with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, to sponsor the Nebraska Lectures: the Chancellor’s Distinguished Speaker Series. Typically offered once a semester, the Nebraska Lectures bring together the university community with the greater community in Lincoln and beyond to celebrate the intellectual life of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by showcasing the faculty’s excellence in research and creative activity.
The topics of these free lectures reflect the diversity of faculty accomplishments in the arts, humanities, social sciences and physical sciences. For more than 10 years, this forum has crossed academic boundaries to build morale and a sense of common identity, allowing some of the great minds on the UNL faculty to share notable discoveries in a non-technical format, fostering a collective passion for education and research, and spurring the imaginations of those who share the need to know more.
Life Ascending: Extreme Animals and Exploration in the High Andes
Jay Storz
Willa Cather Professor of Biological Sciences
3:30 p.m., Oct. 6, 2026, Swanson Auditorium, Nebraska Union
What are the environmental limits of animal life? Jay Storz and his South American collaborators are addressing this question by conducting extreme high-elevation surveys of Andean animals. The fieldwork involves a combination of mountain climbing and zoological surveys in extremely remote regions of the Central Andes that are unexplored by biologists. These surveys have yielded new world records for multiple species of small mammals (mostly mice!) living on or near the summits of more than 22,000 volcanoes. Such elevations were previously thought to be completely uninhabitable. Ongoing genomic and physiological experiments are revealing the adaptive mechanisms that enable the high-elevation mice to survive in such hostile conditions. Storz’s talk will also cover indigenous Andean cultures, from the time of the Incan Empire to the present, and their relationship to sacred Andean peaks.
The live webstream will begin at 3:30 p.m. CST on Oct. 6.
If the player below does not work, copy and paste the following address into your browser: https://ianrmedia.unl.edu/live-2.
More information about Life Ascending: Extreme Animals and Exploration in the High Andes
