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 [...]
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 the 30+ km of trails [...]
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 honor indeed for Farah and [...]
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 red" a 19+ yr old [...]
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. Congrats Flavia and Farah!
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 in the Galapagos. Neotropical Ornithological [...]
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 American Philosophical Society. Her second [...]
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 to mitigate forest gaps created [...]
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