A big welcome to Vanessa Luna Celino who will join the lab and become the newest "Gator" in August 2017. Vanessa is supported by a competitive graduate assistantship from the Center for Latin American Studies and will be working towards the Master's of Latin American Studies degree (MALAS) with a specialization in Tropical Conservation [...]
Funded by NSF's Dynamics of Coupled Natural-Human Systems, the Amazon Dams Network will meet with partners from UF Geological Survey, Federal Universities of Tocantins and Rondonia in Brazil, Northern Arizona University, among others, in Flagstaff, Arizona from 14-18 May. This first RCN workshop will promote cross-sectorial dialogue and learning across geographical borders, focusing on [...]
We began this long-term project on birds, with a particular focus on manakins (Aves: Pipridae) in January of 2001. The site - Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Yasuni Biosphere Reserve - is in western Amazonia and is arguably one of the most biodiverse-rich locations on the planet. The field station is operated by the Universidad San Francisco [...]
Hot off the press! PhD candidate Flavia Montano with colleagues Luis Aguirre, Mercedes Gavilanez, and Richard Stevens published "Taxonomic and phylogenetic determinants of functional composition on Bolivian bat assemblages" in PLoS ONE (released 6 July 2016). You can access the publication here. Their work compiles a rich data set on bats from many habitats within [...]
From 9-13 May, Bette spent one glorious week talking about seed dispersal at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center under the excellent leadership of a dynamic trio of young women scientists: Noelle Beckman (SESYNC), Clare Aslan NAU) and Haldre Rogers (Iowa State University). This team had assembled a stellar cast of empirical, mathematical and theoretical biologists together [...]
Congratulations to Dr. Gonzalo Rivas for receiving his PhD degree at UF's graduation ceremony on 7 August 2015 at the O'Connell Center. Gonzalo, pictured here with UF President Kent Fuchs, will soon start an assistant professor position at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. There he will continue his ecological research in the Amazon [...]
Flavia Montano was recently awarded a Field Museum Visiting Scholarship to travel to the Field Museum in Chicago and work with Dr. John Bates. She will likely make this journey in Fall 2015 to examine and measure museum specimens of Bolivian birds as part of her dissertation research examining community assemblage and variation in functional traits along [...]
Near Tarapoto, Peru, a private company is clearing rain forests to establish a heart-of-palm plantation. The company is interested in mitigating the impacts to biological diversity and has planned to leave 25 m buffers around existing streams and wetland areas. Farah Carrasco Rueda is a PhD student in SNRE and TCD and a Peruvian national. She [...]
Bette joined the on-going UF-OTS graduate specialty course in Costa Rica and spent a stimulating day discussing biodiversity conservation issues with law professors from Costa Rica and UF, law and natural resource students from Costa Rica, Colombia and the US. The course, Tropical Conservation and Sustainable Development: Law, Policy and Practice, combines lectures, field site [...]
Farah Carrasco Rueda is off to Peru on 30 April to begin her pilot field season examining the conservation value of forest trips in palm plantations. Farah is funded by a TCD field research grant. Oscar Gonzalez left for Carpish Mountains of Peru on 1 May to wrap up data collection for his PhD dissertation that [...]
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