With co-authors Krithi Karanth (WCS-India) and Brijesh Thapa (UF), Mahi Puri's paper "Trends and pathways for ecotourism research in India" appeared in the Journal of Ecotourism in May 2018. Reviewing 30 studies on ecotourism since 2005, the authors identified research gaps in ecotourism as well as the reasons to develop ecotourism. Mahi and colleagues also [...]
Congratulations to Flavia Montano for receiving a WWF alumni grant to attend the WWF Alumni meeting and the ATBC meetings in Malaysia this summer. In Malaysia Flavia will present on her dissertation research investigating how functional, phylogenetic and taxonomic diversity changes across environmental gradients. Flavia has also recently become a member of the SECSI Chapter of [...]
Congratulations to Robin Botero-Arias for his new publication in Conservation Genetics. The paper "Delimitation of evolutionary units in Cuvier's dwarf caiman, Paleosuchus palpebrosus (Cuvier, 1807): insights from conservation of a broadly distributed species" uses molecular genetics to define evolutionary significant units (ESU) of dwarf caimans. The work highlights how biodiversity is often underestimated and suggests [...]
Bat Conservation International recognized the dissertation research of PhD candidate Farah Carrasco with a $5000 Global Bat Conservation Priorities grant PLUS a $1000 Women in Conservation Science special recognition. Farah is studying bat communities in the Amazon of Peru with a focus on examining how agricultural land use practices affect bats and [...]
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 [...]
The main product of Dr. Oscar Gonzalez dissertation was recently published in the open access journal PeerJ. This study examined the interactions between birds and flowering plants in elfin forest of the high Andes in Peru. The study tests the importance of neutral processes and biological constraints in influencing species interactions and network properties. Biological [...]
The second annual meeting of the NSF-funded Manakin Genomics Research Coordination Network met from 13-16 August at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland. 43 individuals participated including graduate and undergraduate students, post-docs, faculty and research scientists from Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Germany, and Peru. This meeting focused on advancing activities of 7 working groups. [...]
Great news for PhD candidate Flavia Montano. Not one, but two research awards came this past week. The Rufford Foundation and World Wildlife Fund Russell E. Train Education for Nature Program both selected Flavia for funding in their competitive grants programs. Her dissertation research is focused on revealing what drives bird community assembly (especially mixed-species [...]
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 [...]
Does a predator have you by the leg? Well, lose that leg! or not? What does "dropping a leg" mean to animal's movement after escape from a predator? Well, if you have 8 legs, maybe not much, and given the alternative.... Farah and her colleagues experimentally tested the costs of losing legs in harvestmen. Learn [...]
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