Yearly Archives: 2015

/2015

Here we go…. Fall Semester 2015

By | August 23rd, 2015|graduate students, TCD, teaching, WEC|

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 Amazonia (Ecuador).  Looking forward to [...]

Gonzalo Rivas – the FIRST UF Gator PhD from the lab

By | August 9th, 2015|ecology, Ecuador, graduate students|

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 ecological research in the Amazon [...]

Off to the meetings…..

By | July 31st, 2015|graduate students, research|

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 [...]

Oscar Gonzalez receives WWF Russell E. Train Fellowship

By | July 31st, 2015|Andes, birds, graduate students, Peru|

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 between birds and flowering plants [...]

Congrats to Flavia Montano for receiving two new grants

By | July 26th, 2015|Bolivia, graduate students, research|

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 [...]

Porcupines can’t jump….

By | July 26th, 2015|Amazon, graduate students, Peru, research|

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 [...]

Fun trip to Lee County

By | April 22nd, 2015|birds, teaching, tropical|

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 hotspots in the area.  Bette [...]

New grants and papers from the lab

By | January 17th, 2015|birds, Costa Rica, ecology, field station, graduate students, research, tropical|

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 and variation in functional traits along [...]