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.
