Collaborating ecology professors earn national honors and discuss their work together
by Mike Peña, UC Santa Cruz
May 6, 2026
Just weeks apart, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) has honored two professors of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for their impactful contributions to the field. On April 15, ESA announced Assistant Professor Roxanne Beltran as a 2026 Early Career Fellow; and this morning, the organization announced Professor Erika Zavaleta as the inaugural recipient of an award recognizing mentorship towards diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
Beltran was cited for her intrepid, interdisciplinary work that integrates animal behavior, physiology, and environmental change to understand how and why animals survive and die in rapidly changing ecosystems. Her research combines long-term field studies, biologging, and demographic data to uncover how individual traits and environmental conditions interact to shape life history strategies in long-lived marine vertebrates, particularly northern elephant seals.
The current monitoring of highly pathogenic avian influenza’s impact on the seal colony at Año Nuevo Reserve demonstrates her commitment to understanding this complex interplay—even as alarming conditions emerge in real time.
Zavaleta, who was named an ESA Fellow in 2018, is now the recipient of the new Fakhri A. Bazzaz and Steward T.A. Pickett Award, which honors excellence in mentoring future generations of ecologists. A leader of groundbreaking research on biodiversity’s importance to people and nature, Zavaleta has also established multiple programs at UC Santa Cruz that are designed to lift up students who have faced adversity and help students of all backgrounds succeed.
In 2018, she founded the Center to Advance Mentored, Inquiry-based Opportunities (CAMINO), which removes barriers to research by providing accepted undergraduates with training and a paid summer research position in ecology. In 2015, Zavaleta brought the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program to UC Santa Cruz. Over the course of 10 years, the program prepared 160 undergraduates from diverse backgrounds to be leaders in conservation and transform the field in many ways.
Keep reading: https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/05/beltran-zavaleta-esa/
Read the ESA Fellows announcement: https://esa.org/blog/2026/04/15/ecological-society-of-america-announces-2026-fellows/
Read the ESA Awards announcement: https://esa.org/blog/2026/05/06/ecological-society-of-america-announces-2026-award-recipients/