March 2024
New publication on long-term research examining bird populations in Amazon forests
Just this week, we published our results from 22 years of studies on bird populations in 2 100-ha plots in the Amazon forests of Ecuador in Global Ecology and Conservation. Starting in 2010, we began to see widespread declines in observations and captures of birds, and reported on these [...]
Palmchat team hard at work in the DR
Rick Stanley, PhD candidate in SNRE, has recruited Marlyn Zuluaga (PhD student, WEC), Liz Hurtado and Wenyi Zhou (PhD students, Biology) to join him in the Dominican Republic for 2 weeks to help capture palmchats, an endemic bird of Hispaniola. Rick's PhD will investigate the social behavior and ecology [...]
October 2023
Visit to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Thrilled to have visited Michigan Tech University and the lab of Dr. Jared Wolfe this past week. Met many great students and faculty, learned more about Isle Royale wolf-moose dynamics, spent the morning at a bird/mammal banding station, and saw the amazing landscape and forests on the edge of Lake [...]
January 2023
Ready for Spring 2023
Long time since we have taken a picture of our Tropical Ecology Lab group (aka "White House" group). We are missing a few students from my lab in this picture - Vanessa Luna was in Peru (co-advised by Karen Kainer) and Akshay Anand (advised by Rob Guralnick, co-advised by Bette) was [...]
January 2022
New paper on black caimans by Robin Botero-Arias and colleagues
Hot off the press: "Assessment of local community perspective about caiman management in the Mamiraua Reserve, Brazil" was just published in Volume 13 of International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (DOI: 10.4018/IJSESD.287884) by Robinson Botero-Arias and colleagues Diogo de Lima Franco, Rodolfo Araújo Moraes Filho and Tales Wanderley Vital. The study reports on [...]
Participatory mapping for strengthening environmental governance
Congratulations to TCD's Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon (GIA) team led by UF-SFFGS PhD candidate Carla Mere and Dr. Andrea Chavez and Dr. Eben Broadbent, plus graduate students and colleagues from 4 Amazonian countries for the recent open access publication of "Participatory Mapping for Strengthening Environmental Governance on Socio-Ecological Impacts [...]
December 2021
Emily Khazan is a PhD! Congratulations!!
Emily Khazan successfully defended her PhD dissertation in Interdisciplinary Ecology, UF's School of Natural Resources and Environment this past Wednesday, December 1st. Her dissertation "Thermal, community, and microbial ecology of butterflies of the Colombian Andes" explored how butterflies from one of the most biodiversity-rich areas of the world adapt [...]
November 2021
Vanessa Luna wins UF Doctoral Research Abroad Grant!
Congratulations to PhD student D. Vanessa Luna-Celino for receiving a prestigious UF International Center Research Abroad Grant for her dissertation work on fire management and governance in the Andes of Peru. Vanessa's research will explore how local Quechua communities govern the use of fire for agricultural practices in the high [...]
October 2021
Mahi Puri wins Best Talk award at Student Conference on Conservation Science – New York
Congratulations to Mahi Puri for winning the prestigious Best Talk award at the Student Conference on Conservation Science - New York hosted by the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History. The meeting was held virtually from 5-8 October, 2021. Her talk was entitled "An integrated approach [...]
July 2021
Hot off the Press! Mountain passes are higher in the tropics!
Congratulations to Dr. Flavia Montaño-Centellas (flamontano [at] gmail [dot] com) for her new publication in Journal of Biogeography. Using datasets from montane gradients across the globe, Flavia tests Dan Janzen's idea regarding "Why mountain passes are higher in the tropics" (American Naturalist, 1967) using multiple analyses of bird diversity across [...]
June 2021
Introducing Dr. Mahi Puri !!
Mahi Puri successfully defended her PhD dissertation on Monday, June 28th in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. Her dissertation "Prioritizing and Identifying Opportunities for Carnivore Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes of India" examined three main objectives: "1) determining habitat-use patterns [...]
April 2021
Mahi Puri wins ESA’s Murray F. Buell Award
Mahi Puri, PhD candidate in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation won the outstanding oral presentation by a graduate student at the 2020 Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting. There she presented her work entitled "The balancing act: maintaining leopard-prey equilibrium could offer economic benefits to people in a shared forest landscape [...]
March 2021
New study points to conserving pine forests as key to conserving Bahama Oriole
Rick Stanley, PhD student in UF's Interdisciplinary Ecology program and TCD program recently published a new paper that identifies native pine forests as key to conserving the highly endangered Bahama Oriole on Andros Island in the Bahamas. Contrary to "conventional wisdom", this study discovered that the Bahama Oriole was in fact [...]
February 2021
Untangling what drives avian community assembly in the Andes
Flavia Montaño-Centellas with co-authors Bette Loiselle and Morgan Tingley have published a new paper in Ecography that examines the role of abiotic filtering and biological interactions in explaining bird community assemblages along an extensive elevational gradient in Bolivia. This paper results from Flavia's PhD research support the hypothesis of abiotic [...]
September 2020
Timeline of Students in the Lab
Bette recently gave a talk at the North American Ornithological Conference (NAOC 2020)- on Zoom of course! This was a GREAT meeting that was excellently run and had more than 3000 attendees. While preparing for her talk, Bette put together a timeline of the graduate students she has had in [...]
June 2020
Dimensions of Bat Diversity in Forest-Agricultural Landscapes – Hot off the press!
Congratulations to Dr. Farah Carrasco Rueda for her recent publication in Diversity which reports on her dissertation work in Madre de Dios, Peru. This study examines multiple dimensions of bat diversity at the forest-agriculture frontier in the Amazon of Peru focusing on forests adjacent to papaya plantations and cattle pastures. While [...]
April 2020
Mercury accumulation in tropical bats – new paper in Ecotoxicology
Gold-mining and large-scale agriculture are becoming increasingly prevalent in Amazon forests of Peru and elsewhere. With these activities, the possibility of mercury pollution increases, which could and has had serious negative impacts on human and wildlife health. Dr. Farah Carrasco examined the presence of mercury in tropical bats in a [...]
It’s official! Dr. Michael Esbach!
Congratulations to Dr. Michael Esbach - his dissertation "Hunting for Justice: Cofán subsistence, sustainability, and self-determination in the Ecuadorian Amazon" was just accepted by University of Florida Graduate School. Great work! Michael will graduate (virtually) in May 2020 with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the School of Natural Resources [...]
March 2020
Michael Esbach defends his PhD!!
Congratulations to Dr. Michael Esbach (or at least officially at end of Spring semester 2020) who defended his PhD dissertation "Hunting for Justice: Indigenous self-determination and the sustainability of subsistence in the Ecuadorian Amazon" on 17 March 2020 in a "virtual" defense. Thanks to committee members Drs. Stephen Perz, Susan [...]
Year 20 for Research in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Hello there! This camera trap photo of a jaguar was captured in mid January along the Parahuaco trail in Tiputini Biodiversity Station, a field station in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve operated by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). John Blake has led the camera trap project together with Diego Mosquera, [...]
February 2020
TCD Students Fundraising Projects are Launched – Spread the Word and Support these Innovative Students
Today, 9 graduate students in the Tropical Conservation and Development Program launched their GoFundMe campaigns to support their summer research or professional activities. These campaigns are part of a "learn-by-doing" professional skills courses that contribute to achieving a graduate certificate in Tropical Conservation and Development at the University of [...]
UF Alumna Dr. Flavia Montano-Centellas Interview in “La Region” on International Women in Science Day
Check out this post in La Region which interviewed Dr. Flavia Montaño on International Women in Science Day. Flavia discusses her experiences and challenges as a woman in science.
December 2019
What did you do on Thanksgiving Break? Training Course for Brazilian Government Technicians!
Robinson (Robin) Botero-Arias, PhD candidate in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation went to the Brazilian Amazon and led a training course for black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) management for government technicians over UF's Thanksgiving break. Robin is a crocodilian specialist and has been working with Amazonian caimans for nearly [...]
November 2019
The Balancing Act – New Publication from Mahi Puri & Colleagues on Leopards in Human-Dominated Landscapes in India
Congratulations to WEC PhD candidate Mahi Puri and her colleagues Arjun Srivathsa, Krithi Karanth, Imran Patel and N. Samba Kumar for their new publication in Ecological Indicators: The balancing act: maintaining leopard-wild prey equilibrium could offer economic benefits to people in a shared forest landscape of central India. This article [...]
October 2019
Hot off the Press: Using Functional and Phylogenetic Diversity to Infer Avian Community Assembly Along Elevational Gradients
Dr. Flavia Montaño-Centellas is lead author on a new research paper in Global Ecology and Biogeography "Using functional and phylogenetic diversity to infer avian community assembly along elevational gradients" which represents work from her PhD dissertation in the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Department at the University of Florida. In this [...]
First Record of Black Caiman Feeding on Monkeys!
Robinson Botero-Arias, PhD candidate in UF's Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation in collaboration with Boris Marioni (lead author), Marcela Magalhaes, José de Sousa Silva E. Júnior, and Ronis da Silveira, recently published a note on the diet of Melanosuchus niger, the Black Caiman in Herpetological Review, vol. 50 (3). [...]
Diego Garcia Oleachea teaches “Introduction to Occupancy Models”
Just recently, Diego Garcia visited the Instituto de Investigación para el Desarrollo Sustentable de Ceja de Selva (INDES-CES) at the Universidad Nacional Toribio Rodríguez de Mendoza in Chachapayos, Amazonas, Peru to lead a workshop on "Introduction to Occupancy Models using R". Diego is a PhD candidate in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation [...]
September 2019
Farah Carrasco joins Field Museum staff in Chicago
Dr. Farah Carrasco finished her PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology (SNRE) in December 2018. After wrapping up several of her publications, she joined the Field Museum staff in Chicago as Coordinator of the Putumayo Biological and Cultural Corridor, in the Andes Amazon Program of the Keller Science Action Center at the Museum. [...]
Workshop in Peru focused on community-based conservation areas
Last summer with the support of a local grass-root organization, Red AMA, Vanessa Luna organized a 2-day workshop in Chachapoyas, Peru to promote collective discussion on the factors that limit and facilitate the effective management of community-based conservation areas in the northern Peruvian Andes. She brought together leaders from 10 [...]
August 2019
Members of the White House Lab in Guatemala
Robinson Botero Arias, Thomas Smith and Diego Juarez-Sanchez, all UF PhD students in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, traveled to Guatemala and gave research talks at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala this past July. Diego and Robinson, together with UF alumna Yasmin Quintana, and Valerie Corrado and Rony Garcia, [...]
June 2019
Mahi Puri publishes new paper examining human-carnivore interactions in India
Congratulations to Arjun Srivathsa, Mahi Puri, Krithi Karanth, Imran Patel and Samba Kumar for their recently published paper "Examining human-carnivore interactions using a socio-ecological framework: sympatric wild canids in India as a case study" in Royal Society Open Science. You can access this paper here. Using a socio-ecological framework, [...]
April 2019
Vanessa Luna defends her MA thesis
Congratulations to Vanessa Luna who recently defended her MALAS (Master of Arts in Latin American Studies) thesis. Her thesis entitled "Does establishment of community conservation areas lead to greater protection of existing forest? A case study from the Andes of northern Peru", examined changes in forest cover over the [...]
March 2019
What is the value of riparian forest strips for bat conservation?
Hot off the press! Dr. Farah Carrasco Ruedo (PhD 2018, UF) studied this question for her dissertation research in a recently converted forest destined for palm production in the Amazon of north-central Peru. Her results were just published in Ecology and Evolution and can be found here. These riparian forest [...]
November 2018
Mixed-species bird flocks – hot off the press!
Congratulations to Flavia Montaño-Centellas for her new paper with colleagues Lia Nahomi Kajiki, Giselle Mangini, Gabriel Colorado and María Elisa Fanjul that explores mixed-species bird flocks along elevational, latitudinal, and human disturbance gradients in the Neotropics. This paper results from a special symposium entitled "Mixed-species flocks of birds: ecology [...]
September 2018
Silvopastures in Colombia: how do we enhance their value to conserve forest biodiversity?
Bryan Tarbox suggests we can add conservation value to silvopastures by managing them to include certain tree species and microhabitats. These management techniques would improve habitat quality and likely attract and maintain forest species that occupy nearby forest remnants. This research just appeared in CONDOR as part of Bryan's [...]
May 2018
Crowdfunding as a learning tool
Back in 2014 at Emilio Bruna's suggestion, we embarked on a new skills course for graduate students in the Tropical Conservation and Development program - Fundraising Skills for Conservation and Development. Our goals for the course were to (1) to introduce students to the diverse set of private and [...]
Fruits of Sillutinkara pre-Columbian trail, Cotapata National Park, La Paz, Bolivia
Flavia Montaño-Centellas together with colleagues Beatriz Nieto Ariza, Yara Fernández, Alfredo Fuentes, Freddy Zenteno, Emilio Sánchez and Huber Vilka, recently published a gorgeous photo guide to fruits of Sillutinkara pre-Columbian trail in Cotapata National Park, La Paz, Bolivia. This colorful guide highlights 78 fruiting plant species found along an elevational [...]
Mahi Puri publishes new paper on Ecotourism in India
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 [...]
Flavia is heading to Malaysia for ATBC meetings
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 [...]
New Publication from Robinson Botero-Arias
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 [...]
Lots of Great News in Past Weeks
The lab has been busting with good news lately. Congratulations are due to many of our lab mates: Flavia Montaño & Diego Garcia were both awarded 2018 summer fellowships from UF's Biodiversity Institute Flavia will head to Bolivia to record bats using automatic sound recorders along the same elevational [...]
March 2018
Paty Feria is awarded 2018 Outstanding International Female Faculty at UTRGV
I am so thrilled to learn about successes of my colleagues, especially when they were a former PhD student. Dr. Teresa (Paty) Feria is being honored as the 2018 Outstanding International Female Faculty at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley @utrgv on March 9, 2018. Paty received her PhD in [...]
Farah Carrasco exit seminar at UF
The School of Natural Resources and Environment is hosting a seminar on Monday, March 12, 2018, 1:55PM-2:45PM in 112 Newins-Ziegler Hall. Farah Carrasco-Rueda, Ph.D. candidate and UFBI Fellow, will present “Landuse change and biodiversity: understanding patterns, driving mechanisms and impacts of mitigation.” Farah’s dissertation work is focused on the effects of landuse cover [...]
November 2017
Documenting display behavior of blue-backed manakins
As part of her MS thesis, Ghislaine Cardenas, co-advised by C. Daniel Cadena (Univ. de los Andes) and Bette Loiselle (Univ. Florida), described the display behavior, vocalizations, and social organization of the blue-backed manakin (Chiroxiphia pareola napensis) in Amazon of Ecuador at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station. Males of blue-backed manakins [...]
October 2017
Tools and Strategies for Conservation and Development in the Amazon
Recently, several of us from the lab participated in a workshop organized by UF's Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) Program: "Tools and Strategies for Conservation and Development in the Amazon: Lessons Learned and Future Pathways". This workshop brought together ~105 individuals including academics, conservation and development practitioners, research scientists, lawyers, [...]
June 2017
Vanessa Luna to join the Lab in August 2017
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 [...]
May 2017
Amazon Dams Network first RCN meeting coming soon in Flagstaff, Arizona
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 [...]
March 2017
Amazon Dams Network awarded a UF Biodiversity Institute seed grant
The newly created UF Biodiversity Institute (UFBI) awarded a Faculty Interdisciplinary Seed Grant to a joint effort by UF faculty, students and Brazilian collaborators of the Amazon Dams Network (Rede Barragens Amazônicas -ADN/RBA), hosted in the Tropical Conservation and Development Program (TCD) in the Center for Latin American Studies, in [...]
Farah Carrasco awarded Global Bat Conservation Priorities grant
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 [...]
January 2017
Long-term study of manakins in its 17th year
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 [...]
Farah Carrasco publishes new paper in Biotropica
Do primates avoid areas disturbed by infrastructure development? Find out what PhD candidate Farah Carrasco Rueda found out in a study with colleagues at Smithsonian Institution - Tremie Gregory, Jessica Deichmann, Joseph Kolowski and Alfonso Alonso. Published in Biotropica, Farah and colleagues examined how primates used a forest area before, [...]
December 2016
Study on bird-flowering plant interactions published
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 [...]
September 2016
Lower-ranking manakin males display more at larger leks
Our paper on "Trade-offs in male display activity with lek size" is now published on PlosOne: Cestari, C., B. A. Loiselle, and M. A. Pizo. Trade-offs in male display activity with lek size. PloS ONE: 11(9): e0162943 Click here to see the publication. The field research was led by Cesar [...]
Hernan Alvarez joins other WCS Gators in Ecuador
Hernan Alvarez received his TCD graduate certificate and M. Sc. degree from Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at UF in the Loiselle lab in 2015. Shortly after that he returned to Ecuador as the "Technician in Community-based and Participatory Management" at Wildlife Conservation Society program in Ecuador. He uses his experiences working [...]
Oscar Gonzalez accepts Assistant Professor position at Emmanuel College
Oscar earned his PhD in 2015 from UF's School from Natural Resources and the Environment. His dissertation research explored species interactions between flowering plants and birds in elfin forests of the high Andes in Peru. In August 2016, he moved to a new faculty position teaching undergraduate biology at Emmanuel [...]
Manakin Genomics Research Coordination Network group meets in SERC
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 [...]
July 2016
Diego Garcia receives Peruvian government fellowship!
Congratulations to incoming PhD student Diego Garcia for receiving a prestigious Peruvian CONCYTEC fellowship to cover years 3-5 at University of Florida in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation graduate program. This fellowship will complement funding he has received from LASPAU-Fulbright program for years 1 and 2, together with tuition support from the [...]
New publication on Bolivian bat assemblages by Flavia Montano
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 [...]
Flavia Montano receives two field grants for Bolivia research
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 [...]
June 2016
Welcome to Diego Garcia
Diego will be joining the Gator Nation in August 2016 as he enters the PhD program in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. He completed his undergraduate degree at Peru's National University in Piura. He studies the ecology and conservation of endemic birds in an important bird area in nw Peru. Climate [...]
May 2016
Exciting week of nothing but seed dispersal
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, [...]
April 2016
“In memory of our fallen women”
A shout out to all of the Latino-Hispanic Organization of Graduate Students (LOGRAS) at UF who recently painted a mural on the famous 34th Street wall. Diego Juarez from WEC is President of LOGRAS. Farah Carrasco says "the initiative was born after the assassination of the environmental activist Bertha Caceres and [...]
March 2016
Class crowdfunding projects are a success!
Congratulations to our team of intrepid students that developed their first crowdfunding campaigns in our skills course: Fundraising for Conservation and Development Professionals. 5 projects raised a grand total of $6483 in 30 days with 221 donations. To learn more - click here.
Farah Carrasco Rueda’s new paper in Journal of Arachnology is published.
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 [...]
Rosy Padron arrives at US Embassy in Quito!
UF undergrad Rosy Padron is conducting an internship with the Public Affairs Section at the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador. She has just arrived and is getting to know Quito. Stay tuned to hear updates from Rosy as she explores Quito, works with the embassy and later heads to the [...]
TBS Camera project is now more than a decade old
Beginning in 2005, John Blake and I initiated a camera project at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station with then station manager Jaime Guerra and USFQ professor and station co-directors David Romo and Kelly Swing. With the help of the "tigres", the guys that work at the station, cameras were deployed along [...]
Farah Carrasco featured on UF Graduate School web site
PhD student Farah Carrasco Rueda was featured on the front page of the University of Florida Graduate School web page (click here and look at "slider" pictures) as part of Graduate Student Appreciation Week!! Given the large number of graduate students on the University of Florida campus this is an [...]
February 2016
TCD Crowd-funding Projects Go Live!
Environmental education, dholes, bears, sirens, and communities - these are the focus of 5 crowd-funding projects that are part of the TCD Fundraising Skills for Conservation and Development course. Click here to learn more about the exciting work of these UF TCD students. Not only are these students learning how [...]
December 2015
Heading back to the Amazon
Winter break means field work! On my way back to Yasuni Biosphere Reserve today for another field season in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This is year 16 for our project on population dynamics of tropical birds, with a special emphasis on manakins. This field trip I will find out if "old [...]
Productive visit to UNESP
Wrapping up a two week visit with colleagues Marco Pizo and Cesar Cestari as part of our Science without Borders grant investigating the integration of sexual selection and optimal foraging using white-bearded manakin (Manacus manacus) as a model. We managed to submit two articles in the past few days about [...]
What’s wrong with this picture?
Well besides the fact it could be in better focus! I am back in Brazil visiting my colleagues Cesar Cestari and Marco Pizo at UNESP in Rio Claro. Sunday morning we headed to the local 'natural' area where there are stands of Eucalyptus (30 yr old, 100 yr old), lots [...]
Wrapping up The Amazon seminar
I had the distinct privilege of co-teaching The Amazon seminar with Dr. Marianne Schmink in Fall 2015 - what a great experience! Marianne has been teaching this foundation inter-disciplinary seminar since 1981 when she first taught the course with Drs. Charles Wagley and Chuck Wood. This fall we had 16 [...]
Hernan Alvarez finishes his M. Sc. degree
Congratulations to Hernan Alvarez who successfully defended his M. Sc. thesis on 2 November and turned in his thesis on 2 December 2015. His thesis, entitled "Perceptions, participation, and success in two community-based programs in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon", examined stakeholder responses to two environmental monitoring programs in the Amazon. [...]
November 2015
Oscar Gonzalez a newly minted PhD
Oscar Gonzalez defended his PhD dissertation on Friday, November 20. His committee included Drs. Emilio Bruna, Rob Fletcher, and Ignacio Porzecanski. Next step - make revisions and get the dissertation into the Graduate School by 2 December 2015. Congratulations Oscar and many thanks to his fabulous committee! Update: After turning [...]
October 2015
Gators at BIOCON Peru Conference in Lima October 15-18
Many "Gators", present and past, participated at the Andes Amazon Biodiversity Conservation BIOCONPERU from 15-18 October 2015. Farah Carrasco helped in the organization and running of the conference, while Rodrigo Medellin, Alfonso Alonso, and Bette Loiselle provided two of the plenary lectures.
Rodrigo Medellin visits lab, TCD, and UF
Rodrigo Medellin, international renowned conservation biologist and professor at UNAM-Mexico visited the University of Florida where he gave an inspiring talk about his work in Mexico to a packed house in Newins-Ziegler Wildlife Ecology and Conservation department. Rodrigo was instrumental in getting the bat houses established near Lake Alice while [...]
August 2015
Double Play! Flavia Montano receives CALS scholarship!!
WEC PhD student Flavia Montano, joins labmate Farah Carrascco Rueda, in being awarded the Doris Lowe and Earl and Verna Lowe scholarship from UF’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. This $2000 award recognizes Flavia’s work in examining functional diversity and community assembly of birds along montane gradients in Bolivia. [...]
Climate change impacts birds in western Amazonia?
Our new paper, Enigmatic declines in bird numbers in lowland forest of eastern Ecuador may be a consequence of climate change, reports on widespread declines in bird populations across species within a largely undisturbed forest of western Amazonia. Populations varied but were largely stable until recent years when both species [...]
Farah Carrasco Rueda receives CALS scholarship
SNRE PhD student Farah Carrasco Rueda received the Doris Lowe and Earl and Verna Lowe scholarship from UF's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. This $2000 award recognizes Farah's work on Neotropical bats in Peru.
Here we go…. Fall Semester 2015
Well, where did summer 2015 go? The semester starts tomorrow and the lab is heading back from all kinds of places - Peruvian Amazon, Bolivian Andes, Peruvian Andes, Ecuador Amazon, among others. We welcome new PhD student Michael Esbach who spent his summer in the Solomon Islands, and in western [...]
Gonzalo Rivas – the FIRST UF Gator PhD from the lab
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 [...]
July 2015
Off to the meetings…..
Summer is a busy time and the lab is off to several meetings to present their findings: Association for Tropical Biology, 2015 (12-16 July, Honolulu, Hawaii): Gonzalo Rivas-Torres, Luke Flory, Damian Adams, & Bette Loiselle. Experimental removal of an exotic canopy-forming tree has mixed effects on native and non-native flora [...]
Oscar Gonzalez receives WWF Russell E. Train Fellowship
Congratulations to PhD candidate Oscar Gonzalez from Peru who will receive a World Wildlife Fund Russell E. Train Education for Nature Fellowship for Fall 2015, his final semester at UF. Oscar's research has centered around birds in high elevation forests of the Peruvian Andes. His dissertation works explores the interactions [...]
Congrats to Flavia Montano for receiving two new grants
PhD student Flavia Montano has had a pretty exciting summer so far. Besides conducting field work in the Bolivian Andes, Flavia learned that she has received two field research grants to support her dissertation research. One is from the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research from the [...]
Porcupines can’t jump….
PhD student Farah Carrasco recently published a new paper with Dr. Tremaine Gregory from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, where they describe new information about a recently discovered and little known porcupine of tropical forests. This work results from an innovative camera trap study to examine the use of natural canopy bridges [...]
April 2015
Fun trip to Lee County
On 18 April, Bette got a chance to travel to Fort Myers, Florida in Lee County to participate in a fun-filled bird day hosted by University of Florida Extension. The event had over 50 amateur bird enthusiasts that had spent much of 17 April looking at shorebirds at several birding [...]
January 2015
New grants and papers from the lab
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 [...]
December 2014
Trip to UNESP and Parque Estadual Intervales
Just back from a trip to visit colleagues Marco Pizo and Cesar Cestari at UNESP in Rio Claro. We are in year 2 of a Science without Borders project investigating how male reproductive status influences their fruit foraging decisions. During this trip we advanced significantly on some data analysis from [...]
Join us at UF – New tenure-track position open in Wildlife Ecology & Conservation
The Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation has a new tenure-track position open for an Assistant Professor in Global Change Ecology. We are looking for someone to develop an internationally recognized research program related to global change impacts on wildlife and biodiversity. The individual would be expected to: 1) teach [...]
November 2014
Flavia Montano publishes new paper
Flavia and colleagues explore how habitat disturbance impacts species- and community-level responses of bats in the Andes in a new paper published in Acta Oecologica. Their study shows that at the individual species level, bats behavior and activity patterns can change even with low to moderate levels at disturbance. Such responses [...]
October 2014
Ecuador Ambassador Nathalie Cely visits UF
Ecuador's Ambassador to the United States Nathalie Cely visited the University of Florida on 28-29 March. She met with faculty from the Center for Latin American Studies on Thursday afternoon, as well as Ecuadorian graduate students from across campus. Students from the Loiselle and Blake labs, and other students in [...]
Host-parasite data from Ecuador and the Ozarks used to test hypotheses regarding reciprocal specialization
Are host-parasite systems more specialized in the tropics than in the temperate zones? We asked this question using community-wide data on avian malaria parasites in the Ecuadorean Amazon and in the Ozarks. In both systems we found that host-parasite were highly specialized, much more so than expected by chance. Tropical [...]
September 2014
PhD Student Flavia Montano receives IDEA WILD grant
Congratulations to PhD student Flavia Montano for receiving a grant worth ~$750 from IDEA WILD. Flavia came to UF from Bolivia and is currently in her second year in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. She is interested in examining how species and functional diversity change along environmental gradients. Her grant from IDEA [...]
PhD Student Oscar Gonzalez wins UF-CALS award
Oscar Gonzalez was recently awarded the "Doris Lowe and Earl and Verna Lowe Scholarship" from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Florida. This competitive award is based on "merit and potential for contribution to the agricultural and wildlife environment". More about this and other CALS [...]
August 2014
Conserving biodiversity in palm plantations
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 [...]
July 2014
Mammals use natural canopy bridges to cross over gas pipelines
PhD Student Farah Carrasco's work with Dr. Tremaine Gregory from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute showed that > 20 mammal species used natural canopy bridges to cross over linear clearings resulting from natural gas pipelines in the Peruvian rain forests. The article published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution (Vol. [...]
June 2014
Two Former PhD Students are Plenary Speakers in Costa Rica
Dr. C. Daniel Cadena (Universidad de los Andes, Bogota) and Dr. Jeff Norris (UWC, Costa Rica & Natural Solutions) are both scheduled to give Plenary talks at the IV Costa Rica Ornithological Congress in San Jose (22-24 July 2014). Daniel's talk is entitled "Por que es tan alta diversidad de [...]
UF-OTS Graduate Specialty Course in Costa Rica
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 [...]
May 2014
SAVE Brasil wins 2014 Muriqui Award
Our heartfelt congratulations to the Society for the Conservation of Birds of Brazil SAVE Brasil for winning the 2014 Muriqui Award for their work on protecting birds and forest habitat in the highly endangered ecosystems of the Atlantic Forests of southeast Brazil. This award is regarded as one of the most prestigious awards [...]
OTS launches crowdfunding campaign to give students and researchers a boost
The staff at OTS (@OTS_OET) have put their creativity hats on once again! They developed a wish list for items that would enrich the daily experiences of researchers and students at their varied field sites in South Africa and Costa Rica. To obtain these items, they are counting on a [...]
Trying a modification on the web site
Bear with us as we try out a new wordpress theme (Truly Minimal) for the lab web site.... what else to do on a late Saturday afternoon...
Lab heads off to the field for summer 2014!
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 [...]
April 2014
Loiselle visits Ecology and Evolution group at Florida State University
Bette visited FSU on 11 April to meet with faculty and students and present a seminar entitled "Manakins and fruit: how ecological services are affected by local context, species- and sex-specific requirements".
Lab members receive field research grants
Congratulations to Farah Carrasco Rueda, PhD student in SNRE, and Flavia Montano, PhD student in WEC, who both received field research grants from Tinker funds in the Center for Latin American Studies as part of the Tropical Conservation and Development program grant competition. Farah will work in Peru on a [...]
March 2014
Article on Arboreal Camera Trapping
Check out this new article: Arboreal camera trapping: taken a proven method to new heights doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12177 Farah Carrasco Rueda (PhD student at UF) and her colleagues describe the effectiveness of putting cameras in the canopy to measure animal movement across natural canopy "bridges" that cross a natural gas pipeline clearing.
January 2014
OTS Graduate Courses
OTS is teaching a new graduate-level course on climate change in China in summer 2014. The course is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Check it out here. Also this summer we (Tom Ankersen, Franklin Paniagua, Richard Hamann from UF Levin College of Law) are [...]
Spring Semester is underway
The semester has started and Emilio Bruna and I are teacing a class on fundraising - check it out here.
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