If it is December and winter break, I am heading to the field to resight manakins and continue our long-term studies of bird populations and communities at Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS) in the Amazon of Ecuador. On this trip, the canoe was packed!! TBS is owned and operated by Universidad San Francisco de Quito. Our [...]
Kathi Borgmann reports on declining birds in tropical forests of the Americas in a recent article in Living Bird. She highlights our work in Ecuador, as well as long-term studies in Panama and Brazil. The story is also enriched by reports by Geovanny Rivadeneyra, a naturalist and guide from the Indigenous Kichwa community of Añangu who has [...]
Recently, John Blake and I were interviewed about our recent publication reporting on bird declines in an Amazonian forest. The post by Bernardo Araujo went live on Mongabay.com on 16 May 2024. You can read it here.
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 patterns in 2015. This latest [...]
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 region of Peru where gold-mining [...]
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 and Environment (SNRE) from the [...]
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 Paulson and Robert Walker at [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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