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 [...]
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 this work and have plans [...]
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 of Euterpe palms (an exotic [...]
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 fabulous students and several faculty [...]
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. Hernan is back in Ecuador [...]
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 in his dissertation on 9 [...]
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, 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 a graduate student at UF [...]
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!
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 found in understory and canopy [...]
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