Grants & Awards through ABLS

ABLS offers a variety of awards and grants, including the Tuckerman and Sullivant awards, the Anderson & Crum and Culberson & Hale grants, and Student Travel Grants. See below for more information on each.

Open Applications for Student Proposals:

Anderson & Crum Grants for Field Research in Bryology

This award is made possible by generous donations provided to ABLS by Larry Giles of Duke University and others in honor of Lewis Anderson and Howard Crum, both of whom were committed to field-based research on the biology of bryophytes.

Howard A. Crum (1922-2002) and Lewis E. Anderson (1912-2007) were close colleagues and spirited friends for much of their active careers during the second half of the 20th Century. Crum joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1965, where he served as Curator for the Bryophyte Herbarium until his death in 2002. Anderson joined the Botany Department at Duke University in 1936 and proceeded to build the Duke bryophyte herbarium virtually from scratch. The herbarium was named in his honor – The Lewis E. Anderson Bryophyte Herbarium – in 1998. Crum and Anderson’s shining opus, Mosses of Eastern North America (published in 1981), has been and still is a model flora and highly useful for mosses. Both Anderson and Crum turned their attention to the taxonomy of peatmosses (Sphagnum) during the latter stages of their careers. Crum taught field bryology at the University of Michigan Biological Station each summer for many years and thereby introduced countless students to field bryology. The Anderson-Crum program of small grants to promote field research in bryology was established and first awarded in 2013. Generous gifts from ABLS members fund this program. Applications are solicited each year for proposals from ABLS members.

Two awards of up to $1,000 each are available to support bryology fieldwork by students. Funds are intended primarily to support travel associated with field work, but requests to cover other expenses essential to field work will be considered. Proposed fieldwork may focus on any area of bryology, including systematics, evolution, genetics, physiology, or ecology. Awards are not provided for support of travel to meetings, symposia, or to visit herbaria, museums, or other institutions.

Conditions for Eligibility

Applicant must be a current member of ABLS. In the case of undergraduates who are not ABLS members, their faculty sponsor or graduate student advisor must be a member.
Funds are to be used only for expenses associated with fieldwork and cannot be used for laboratory expenses.
Previous recipients are eligible to apply as long as the previously funded work has been completed and a report has been submitted BEFORE the current application is received.
A brief cover letter outlining the project and the funding request.

Proposals should include:

1. A brief cover letter outlining the project and funding request.

2. A letter of support from the student’s academic advisor/sponsor.

3. A one-page CV for the applicant; if the applicant is an undergraduate student with a graduate student advisor/sponsor, then also include a summary of their qualifications.

4. A two-page proposal (single spaced, 12 point font, one inch margins): the first page should include the project description (including up to three references); the second page should include the budget justification and itemized costs, including information about other funding sources secured or sought for the project and an explicit statement of what additional support is necessary to complete the project.

These four documents should be included in one pdf file in the order listed above. Name the file as follows: Lastname_A&C_Award_2026 (e.g. “Smith_A&C_Award_2026”). Proposals are due by 1 March 2026, and should be submitted by email to ABLS secretary Manuela DalForno at mdalforno@fwbg.org with the subject line “ABLS A&C Student Field Award Application 2026”. Proposals not conforming to these specifications will be rejected and invited to resubmit.

Awardees will be notified in April 2026.
Award recipients are required to submit a brief (1-2 page) report detailing research results by 31 December 2026.

Culberson & Hale Grants for Field Research in Lichenology

This award is made possible by generous donations provided to ABLS by Larry Giles of Duke University and others in honor of William (Bill) Culberson and Mason Hale, both of whom were committed to field-based research on the biology of lichens.

William L. Culberson (1929-2003) and Mason E. Hale (1928-1990) were graduate students together, then lifelong friends and colleagues; the most prominent and influential lichenologists in the United States for their active careers during the second half of the 20th Century. They received their PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Botany (Hale 1953, Culberson 1954) under eminent lichenologist John W. Thomson and eminent ecologist John T. Curtis. Culberson joined the Botany Department faculty at Duke University in 1955, remaining there until retirement in 1995. Bill and his life-long collaborator and wife Chicita together led major advances in the study of lichen chemistry as well as the biological and evolutionary significance of lichens. Bill published over 100 editions of “Recent literature on lichens” and trained a virtual town of lichenologists to shape modern North American lichenology. Hale joined the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Botany in 1957, where he remained until his death. His research contributed to every aspect of lichenology; he was a leader in many of them. His revisions of the hopelessly broad genus Parmelia sensu lato, his publication of an outstanding field guide for both professionals and amateurs, and his many years teaching field courses on lichenology were among his great contributions. Culberson and Hale together authored the monumental early versions of ‘‘Checklist(s) of the lichens of the continental United States and Canada.’ ’The Culberson-Hale program of small grants to promote field research in lichenology was established and first awarded in 2015. Generous gifts from ABLS members fund this program. Applications are solicited each year for proposals from ABLS members.

Two awards of up to $1,000 each are available to support lichenology fieldwork by students. Funds are intended primarily to support travel associated with field work, but requests to cover other expenses essential to field work will be considered. Proposed fieldwork may focus on any area of lichenology, including systematics, evolution, genetics, physiology, or ecology. Awards are not provided for support of travel to meetings, symposia, or to visit herbaria, museums, or other institutions.

Conditions for Eligibility

Applicant must be a current member of ABLS. In the case of undergraduates who are not members of ABLS, their faculty sponsor or graduate student advisor must be a member.
Funds are to be used only for expenses associated with fieldwork and cannot be used for laboratory expenses.
Previous recipients are eligible to apply as long as the previously funded work has been completed and a report has been submitted BEFORE the current application is received.

Proposals should include:

1. A brief cover letter outlining the project and funding request.

2. A letter of support from the student’s academic advisor/sponsor.

3. A one-page CV for the applicant; if the applicant is an undergraduate student with a graduate student advisor/sponsor, then also include a summary of their qualifications.

4. A two-page proposal (single spaced, 12-point font, one inch margins): the first page should include the project description (including up to three references); the second page should include the budget justification and itemized costs, including information about other funding sources secured or sought for the project and an explicit statement of what additional support is necessary to complete the project.

These four documents should be included in one pdf file in the order listed above. Name the file as follows: Lastname_C&H_Award_2026 (e.g. “Jones_C&H_Award_2026”).
Proposals not conforming to these specifications will be rejected and invited to resubmit.

Proposals are due by 1 March 2026, and should be submitted by email to ABLS secretary Manuela Dal Forno at mdalforno@fwbg.org with the subject line “ABLS C&H Student Field Award Application 2026”.

Awardees will be notified in April 2026.
Award recipients are required to submit a brief (1-2 page) report detailing research results by 31 December 2026.

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Tuckerman Award
Edward Tuckerman (1817-1886) is widely considered the father of North American lichenology. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Union College in 1837 and a law degree from Harvard University in 1839. He studied in the Harvard Divinity School for 2-3 years but appears not to have received the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. His interest in lichens was stimulated by a trip to Uppsala, Sweden in 1841, where he met Elias Fries, a leading lichenologist at the time. In 1842, Tuckerman accompanied Professor Asa Gray on a trip to the White Mountains. The bulk of Tuckerman’s herbarium is housed in the Farlow Herbarium at Harvard (FH)
The first Tuckerman award was given for a paper published in volume 97 (issued in 1994) of The Bryologist. The award is offered annually to honor the most outstanding lichenological paper published each year in The Bryologist. The award includes a prize of $1000.00 from the ABLS.

Sullivant Award
William Starling Sullivant (1803-1873) was born in a remote settlement near the site of the present day Columbus, Ohio. Sullivant graduated from Yale College (now Yale University) in 1823. Because of the untimely death of his father, Sullivant spent his early years overseeing family properties, but he became keenly interested in the local flora and made extensive collections during the 1830s and beyond. His first bryological publication was the Musci Allegheaniense, which was accompanied by specimens he collected in the mountains of Maryland to Georgia. His Icones muscorum, or, Figures and descriptions of most of those mosses peculiar to North America which have not yet been figured was published posthumously in 1874.
Along with the Tuckerman award, the Sullivant award was first offered by the ABLS in 1995. The annual award recognizes the best bryological paper published each year in The Bryologist, and includes a prize of $1000.

Student Travel Grants
Student travel grants are available for travel to the ABLS annual meeting. The total amount available varies from year to year, depending on ABLS budgets, donations, and whether or not symposia are also being supported at a particular meeting and if other funds (not ABLS) are available to support symposium presentations. Students must be ABLS members and must be presenting a paper, workshop, or poster in one of the ABLS sessions.