Yearly Archives: 2019

/2019

What did you do on Thanksgiving Break? Training Course for Brazilian Government Technicians!

By | December 4th, 2019|Amazon, Brazil, conservation, ecology, graduate students, wildlife management|

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 20 years and serves as [...]

The Balancing Act – New Publication from Mahi Puri & Colleagues on Leopards in Human-Dominated Landscapes in India

By | November 19th, 2019|camera, ecology, graduate students, India, interdisciplinary|

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 shows that abundance of wild [...]

Hot off the Press: Using Functional and Phylogenetic Diversity to Infer Avian Community Assembly Along Elevational Gradients

By | October 23rd, 2019|Andes, birds, Bolivia, research, WEC|

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 paper she examines bird communities [...]

First Record of Black Caiman Feeding on Monkeys!

By | October 18th, 2019|Amazon, Brazil|

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).  Here they report on food [...]

Diego Garcia Oleachea teaches “Introduction to Occupancy Models”

By | October 18th, 2019|birds, courses, Peru, WEC|

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 at University of Florida co-advised [...]

Farah Carrasco joins Field Museum staff in Chicago

By | September 23rd, 2019|Amazon, Andes, biodiversity, Peru, research|

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.  There she works with UF [...]

Workshop in Peru focused on community-based conservation areas

By | September 20th, 2019|Andes, conservation, development, graduate students, Peru|

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 communities and through use of [...]

Members of the White House Lab in Guatemala

By | August 1st, 2019|conservation, ecology, graduate students, teaching, WEC|

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, also organized a workshop on [...]

Mahi Puri publishes new paper examining human-carnivore interactions in India

By | June 5th, 2019|conservation, graduate students, 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, their study examines what factors [...]

Vanessa Luna defends her MA thesis

By | April 11th, 2019|Amazon, Andes, conservation, development, graduate students, Peru, Uncategorized|

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 past decade in communities without [...]