Check back on a regular basis to see the accomplishments of BGSA members!
2017
December 2017: Stephanie Garvis was awarded $19,028 by Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission for her proposal titled “Northern Coastal Basins Shoreline Characterization Data Analysis”.
November 2017: Brittany Troast won “Best Graduate Oral Presentation” at the Coastal and Estuary Research Federation Biennial meeting for her presentation titled “Dynamics of Fish Community Diversity within the Indian River Lagoon, FL, USA”.
Oct 2017- Madison Hall was awarded $800 from the College of Graduate Studies Presentation Fellowships and $400 from the Department of Biology Student Travel Award to present her research at the 22nd Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
June 2017: Molly Grace published a paper in Frontiers and Evolution: “Roadside Abundance of Anurans within a Community Correlates with Reproductive Investment.”
May 2017: Molly Grace presented research from her dissertation at the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation in Salt Lake City, UT. Both her talk (“Promise and limitations of Roadside Animal Detection Systems”) and her poster (“Traffic noise alters tadpole behavior, but does not affect growth”) won Aspiration Awards for Excellence and the top student presentation award at ICOET.
May 2017: Miles Zhang and Ryan Ridenbaugh published a paper: Zhang, Y.M., Ridenbaugh, R.D. and Sharanowski, B.J., 2017. Integrative taxonomy improves understanding of native beneficial fauna: revision of the Nearctic Peristenus pallipes complex (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) and implications for release of exotic biocontrol agents. Systematic Entomology, 42(3), pp.596-608.
January 2017: Ryan Ridenbaugh and Miles Zhang published a paper: Egan, S.P., Weinersmith, K.L., Liu, S., Ridenbaugh, R.D., Zhang, Y.M. and Forbes, A.A., 2017. Description of a new species of Euderus Haliday from the southeastern United States (Hymenoptera, Chalcidoidea, Eulophidae): the crypt-keeper wasp. ZooKeys, (645), p.37
2016
October 2016: Christina Toms published a paper: Rehman, Z., Toms, C. N., and Finch, C. (2016). Estimating abundance: A nonparametric mark recapture approach for open and closed systems. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 1-16.
October 2016: Havalend Steinmuller received the Society of Wetland Scientists South Atlantic Chapter Travel Award ($200) to present her research on the nutrient dynamics associated with sea level rise in wetland soils at the SWS-GERS meeting in November in Pensacola.
Sept 2016: Miles Zhang won 2nd place for his graduate student oral presentation at the International Congress of Entomology titled “From population to speciation: Evolution of the Peristenus pallipes (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) complex”.
Sept. 2016: Madison Hall published a paper: Adimey, N. M. Ross, M. Hall, J Reid, M. Barlas, B. Bonde.2016. Twenty-Six Years of Post-Release Monitoring of Florida Manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris): Evaluation of a Cooperative Rehabilitation Program. Aquatic Mammals. 42.3 (2016): 376-391.
August 2016: Ian Kutch published a paper: Fedorka, K. M., I. C. Kutch, L. Collins, and E. Musto. 2016. Cold temperature preference in bacterially infected Drosophila melanogaster improves survival but is remarkably suboptimal. Journal of Insect Physiology 93–94:36-41.
August 2016: Alexa Trujillo published a paper: Uncovering discordance between taxonomy and evolutionary history in Florida racoons. A. L. Trujillo and E. A. Hoffman. 2016. Systematics and Biodiveristy.
August 2016: Havalend Steinmuller published a paper: H. E. Steinmuller, S. A. Graham, J. R. White, M. B. McKee, and I. A. Mendelssohn. 2016. A decadal-scale nutrient loading study in a coastal wetland: Impacts on soil microbial processes. Ecological Engineering.
July 2016: Katie Mercier won the Society for the Study of Reptiles and Amphibians (SSAR) Victor Hutchinson Poster award in Evolution, Genetics, and Systematics at the Joint Meeting of Ichthylogists and Herpetologists in New Orleans, Louisiana.
April 2016: Jason Strickland published a paper: J. L. Strickland, S. Carter, F. Kraus, and C. Parkinson. 2016. Snake evolution in Melanesia: origin of the Hydrophiinae (Serpentes, Elapidae), and the evolutionary history of the enigmatic New Guinean elapid Toxicocalamus. Zoological Journal of the Lineean Society. See the paper here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1096-3642.
April 2016: Havalend Steinmuller was awarded Louisiana State University’s College of the Coast and Environment Outstanding Thesis of the Year Award.
March 2016: Ryan Chabot, Chris Long, Katrina Phillips, Gustavo Stahelin, and Ryan Welsh were each awarded $800 College of Graduate Studies Presentation Fellowships and funding from the Department of Biology Student Travel Award to present their research at the 36th Annual International Sea Turtle Symposium in Lima, Peru.
March 2016: Tiffani Manteuffel won 2nd place graduate student poster at Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference for her poster titled ‘Abundance and distribution of crayfishes in two Florida rivers assessed with n-mixture models’.
March 2016: Christina Toms won runner up for best graduate student poster presented at the Southeast Ecology and Evolution Conference for her poster titled ‘Seasonal movement patterns of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in the Florida Panhandle’.
March 2016: Sanabel Mahmoud won 2nd place undergraduate student talk at Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference for her talk “Heat shock proteins as quantifiable stress indicators in Bd infected amphibians.”
March 2016: Lina Sanchez published a paper: L.M. Sánchez-Clavijo, J. Hearns, P.F. Quintana-Ascencio. 2016. Modeling the effect of habitat selection mechanisms on population responses to landscape structure. Ecological Modelling 328:99–107.
March 2016: Havalend Steinmuller published a book chapter: El Ciclo del Nitrogeno en los Humedales in Humedales de Tratamiento: Una alternativa para America Latina.
March 2016: Tiffani Manteuffel was recognized during UCF’s Women’s History Month as a student leader (March 10th, here: http://lsa.sdes.ucf.edu/inspire/history).
January 2016: Lavinia Cheng published a paper: Weishampel, Z.A., W. Cheng, and J. F. Weishampel. 2016. Sea turtle nesting patterns in Florida vis-à-vis satellite-derived measures of artificial lighting. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. See the press release here: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-01/uocf-ssf012816.php
2015
December 2015: Ian Kutch published a paper: Kutch IC, Fedorka KM. 2015. Y-linked variation for autosomal immune gene regulation has the potential to shape sexually dimorphic immunity. Proc. R. Soc. B 282: 20151301. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.1301
December 2015: Jason Strickland was awarded $1,000 from the Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research program to conduct his field research for his project titled: “Convergent evolution within a species? Hemotoxic venom in Mojave Rattlesnakes from Mexico and Arizona.”
October 2015: Rhett Rautsaw was awarded the J. Larry Landers Student Research Award ($1000) while at the 37th Annual Gopher Tortoise Council Meeting in Covington, Louisiana.
October 2015: Rhett Rautsaw received the Graduate Presentation Fellowship ($500), the Boyd Lyon Travel Award ($150) and the Student Travel Award ($100) to attend the 37th annual Gopher Tortoise Council Meeting in Covington, Louisiana.
September 2015: Christine Swanson was awarded a $500 College of Graduate Studies Presentation Fellowship to present her research: “Flying under the LIDAR: relating forest structure to bat community diversity” at the North American Society for Bat Research annual meeting in Monterey, CA.
September 2015: Molly Grace raised $400 to fund her research project, “Does traffic noise negatively affect frogs? Getting the jump on a potential threat” using the crowdfunding platform Experiment.com.
September 2015: Stephanie Garvis received the University of Central Florida, College of Graduate Studies Travel Fellowship ($500) and Student Government Senate Conference Registration and Travel Award ($250) to attend the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Meeting in Portland, Oregon.
August 2015: Stephanie Garvis published a paper: Garvis, S. K., et al. (2015). “Formation, Movement, and Restoration of Dead Intertidal Oyster Reefs in Canaveral National Seashore and Mosquito Lagoon, Florida.” Journal of Shellfish Research 34(2): 251-258. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2983/035.034.0206
July 2015: Jason Strickland was awarded $3,962 by the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Research Grant for his proposal titled: “Convergent evolution within a species? Hemotoxic venom in Mojave Rattlesnakes from Mexico and Arizona.”
July 2015: Molly Grace received a $500 GSA Graduate Presentation Fellowship to present at the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in Reno, NV
July 2015: Molly Grace published a paper: Grace, MK, DJ Smith, and RF Noss. 2015. Testing alternative designs for a roadside animal detection system using a driving simulator. Nature Conservation, 11: 61– 77. doi: 10.3897/natureconservation.11.4420
June 2015: Tiffani Manteuffel led a group of biology graduate student instructors of BIOTEC, a week-long biology summer camp for high school students. The camp was in conjunction with OCTET, a chemistry summer camp, under the direction of Dr. Florencio Hernandez. Instructors from BGSA are: Danae Perry, Chris Long, Ryan Chabot, Hester Dingle, Molly Grace and Matthew Lawrance.
June 2015: Jason Strickland won a $500 grant from SnakeDays Inaugural Research grant for his proposal titled: “Selection and venom evolution in Mojave Rattlesnakes, Crotalus scutulatus.“
May 2015: Stephanie Garvis was awarded $30,000 by Saint Johns River Water Management District for her proposal titled “Northern Coastal Basins Oyster Health Index”. Her Co-PIs were Drs. Linda Walters, Melinda Donnelly and Paul Sacks.
May 2015: Tiffani Manteuffel was awarded a $500 College of Graduate Studies Presentation Fellowship and a $448 Department of Biology Travel Award to present her research “Abundance and distribution of crayfish in two Florida spring-fed rivers” at the Society for Freshwater Science meeting in Milwaukee, WI.
May 2015: Hannah Bevan was awarded a $500 College of Graduate Studies Presentation Fellowship to present her research, “Potential global spread of a large predator, the Nile Monitor (Varanus niloticus),” at the 100th Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
May 2015: Hannah Bevan was awarded a $1000 College of Sciences General Scholarship.
May 2015: Kendra Cope became the new Sea Turtle Coordinator/Environmental Specialist for Indian River County Public Works.
May 2015: Alex Orfinger was awarded a $1572.17 Fisheries Society of the British Isles Small Research Grant for his research, “Trophic Ecology of Weakly Electric Fishes (Teleostei: Gymnotiformes) of the Upper Amazon Basin”
May 2015: Christine Swanson awarded the University of Florida Water Institute Graduate Fellowship to research impacts of dams on the Amazon River, with an approximate total award amount of $143,000. (www.waterinstitute.ufl.edu, www.amazondamsnetwork.org)
April 2015: Chris Long received UCF Department of Biology Travel Award ($1,000), UCF Graduate Travel Fellowship ($800) and the ISTS Student Travel Grant (covered cost of hotel stay) to travel to International Sea Turtle Symposium (ISTS) in Dalaman, Turkey.
April 2015: Jason Strickland was awarded a $1,000 UCF Department of Biology Travel award to conduct his field research for his project titled: “Convergence within a species? Hemotoxic venom in Mojave Rattlesnakes.”
April 2015: Jason Strickland won a best poster award: Strickland, J.L., A.J. Mason, and C.L. Parkinson. Maintenance of venom phenotypes in Mojave Rattlesnakes in spite of gene flow and environmental similarity. Southwestern Association of Naturalists, San Diego State University, San Diego, California. *Clark Hubbs Award for Best Poster $600.00.
April 2015: Jason Strickland was awarded a $500 College of Graduate Studies Presentation Fellowship to present his research titled: “Maintenance of venom phenotypes in Mojave Rattlesnakes in spite of gene flow and environmental similarity.” Southwestern Association of Naturalists, San Diego State University, San Diego, California.
April 2015: Katrina Phillips received an $800 GSA Graduate Presentation Fellowship and a Department of Biology Student Travel Award to present at the International Sea Turtle Symposium in Dalaman, Turkey.
March 2015: Katie Mercier was awarded UCF’s Graduate Dean’s Fellowship. It provides $2000 a semester for up to 4 years.
March 2015: Katrina Phillips was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship which will fully fund three years of graduate study, with an approximate total award amount of $138,000.
February 2015: Ryan Chabot, Kendra Cope, Chris Long, and Katrina Phillips were awarded travel grants from the International Sea Turtle Society to attend the 35th Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation in Dalaman, Turkey.
January 2015: Hannah Bevan was awarded a $1000 Department of Biology Student Travel Award to present her research, “Projecting the spread of a large carnivorous reptile,” at the International Biogeography Society Conference in Bayreuth, Germany.
January 2015: Stephanie Garvis was awarded a $10,000 Aylesworth Scholarship through the Aylesworth Foundation for the Advancement of Marine Science, the Southeastern Fisheries Association, and the Florida Sea Grant program.
2014
December 2014: Stephanie Garvis was awarded $145,659 by Saint Johns River Water Management District for her proposal titled “Northern Coastal Basins Oyster Mapping”. Her Co-PIs were Drs. Linda Walters, Melinda Donnelly and John Weishampel.
November 2014: Jennifer Manis and Stephanie Garvis published a paper: Manis, J.E., Garvis, S.K., Jachec, S.M. & L.J. Walters. 2014. Wave attenuation experiments over living shorelines over time: A wave tank study to assess recreational boating pressures. Journal of Coastal Conservation. DOI: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11852-014-0349-5
November 2014: Jason Strickland published a paper: Strickland, J.L., C.L. Parkinson, J.K. McCoy and L.K. Ammerman. 2014. Phylogeography of Agkistrodon piscivorus in Texas and throughout its range. Copeia in press. URL:http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1643/CG-13-123
November 2014: Jessica Hightower and Christine Butterfield published a paper in the journal Remote Sensing titled “Quantifying Ancient Maya Land Use Legacy Effects on Contemporary Rainforest Canopy Structure”, available at http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/6/11/10716.
November 2014: Caitlyn Debevec won the International Biogeography Society (IBS) Student Travel award for $300 and a fee waiver. She will present at the (IBS) conference in January in Bayreuth, Germany.
November 2014: Alex Orfinger received the University of Central Florida College of Graduate studies Travel Fellowship to attend the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida for $300.
October 2014: Ian Kutch published a paper: Kutch I.C., Sevgili H., Wittman T., and Fedorka K.M. Thermoregulatory strategy may shape immune investment in Drosophila melanogaster, Journal of Experimental Biology, 217, 3664-3669 doi: 10.1242/jeb.106294
October 2014: Chris Long was awarded a $2000 grant from SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Conservation Fund for his project “Using genetics to study male green turtle behavior and migration.”
July 2014: Jessica Hearns won the NSF AIMS International Travel Award for $1000. She presented at the 10th AIMS Conference on Dynamical Systems, Differential Equations and Applications in Madrid, Spain.
June 2014: Jessica Hearns won the GSA Presentation Fellowship Award for $800. She preseted at the 9th European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology in Gothenburg, Sweden.
April 2014: Jason Strickland won the Howard McCarley Student Research Grant for $1000 for the project titled “Venom Evolution in Rattlesnakes of the Southwestern U.S.” through the Southwestern Association of Naturalists.
April 2014: Madison Hall won the UCF Biology PhD student travel Award for presenting on Seascape Genetics and Manatee Conservation at the 2014 Spring School in Landscape Genetics in Goettingen, Germany.
April 2014: Hannah Perkins won the Engaging Community Online Award and the Best in the College of Sciences Award for $500 at the Service Learning Showcase.
April 2014: Jessica Hearns won the NSF Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013+ award for $1450. She collaborated with the University of Alberta Mathematical Ecology Lab and attending the Alberta Math Dialogue in Camrose, AL Canada.
April 2014: Lavinia Cheng awarded Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA) Central Florida Chapter Scholarship
March 2014: Jason Strickland won a grant for $1000 for the project “Snake Speciation in the Deming Plains Prairie of the Southwestern U.S.” through Prairie Biotic Research Inc..
March 2014: Madison Hall was selected to attend the 2014 Spring School in Landscape Genetics at the University of Goettingen in Germany with travel, materials, and attendance supported by the Volkswagen foundation.
March 2014: Alexis Maldonado was selected as a recipient of the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award. This will be awarded at the US-International Association of Landscape Ecology Meeting in Anchorage, AK in May.
March 2014: Tiffany Manteuffel won the Graduate Poster contest at SEEC 2014.
Febuary 2014: Stephanie Garvis was awarded an NCALM seed grant for her project (worth approximately $20,000): using shallow water bathymetric LiDAR data to characterize seagrass beds to parameterize storm surge and sea level rise models.”
January 2014: Joshua Castro received the University of Central Florida, College of Graduate Studies Travel Fellowship and Student Government Senate Conference Registration and Travel Award to attend the International Sea turtle Symposium in New Orleans, Louisiana.
2013
December 2013: Joshua Castro was awarded the Biology Department Travel Award to attend the International Sea Turtle Symposium in New Orleans, Louisiana.
November 2013: Stephanie Garvis received the University of Central Florida, College of Graduate Studies Travel Fellowship and Student Government Senate Conference Registration and Travel Award to attend the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Meeting in San Diego, California.
November 2013: Christine Butterfield received a $2,500 UCF LIFE grant for her research “Acoustic surveying of bat community diversity in relation to LiDAR-derived forest structure.”
October 2013: Jessica Hearns won the NSF Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 $1300 for presenting at the AARMS Mathematical Biology Workshop on Sustainability of Aquatic Ecosystem Networks in Fredricton, NB Canada
October 2013: Jessica Hearns won the NSF The Mathematical Biosciences Insititute $500 for presenting at the IV International Conference on Mathematical Modeling and Analysis of Populations in Biological Systems in Lubbock, TX USA
October 2013: Simona Ceriani received $5,500 Research-in-Residence award from the Inter-University Training for Continental-Scale Ecology (ITCE). She will be working at the University of Colorado.
September 2013: Hester Dingle, Christen Steele, Derek Woller, Tyler Raszick, Steve Gotham and Ricardo Marino-Perez received the University of Central Florida, Student Government Senate Conference Registration and Travel Award to attend the 61st annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America for $250 each.
August 2013: Derek Woller and Ricardo Marino-Perez received the University of Central Florida, College of Graduate studies Travel Fellowship to attend the 11th International Congress of Orthopterology in China for $650.
August 2013: Ricardo Marino-Perez received the Entomological Society of America, Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity Section travel award for $1,500.
July 2013: Jessica Hearns won the NSF Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 $1360 for attending the AARMS Mathematical Biology Summer School in St. John’s, NL Canada
July 2013: Alexis Maldonado was awarded the FLEPPC Julia Morton Invasive Plant Research Grant for her thesis project.
July 2013: Christina Toms published: Smith CE, Hurley BJ, Toms CN, Mackey AD, Solangi M, Kuczaj SA II. 2013. Hurricane impacts on the foraging patterns of bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus in Mississippi Sound. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 487:231-244.
June 2013: Alexis Maldonado won best student poster as Southestern_EPPC Symposium for her presentation: A LiDAR EVALUATION OF 3-DIMENSIONAL PATTERNS OF THE INVASIVE OLD WORLD CLIMBING FERN.
June 2013: Christina Toms was awarded the University of Central Florida Arnold Haverlee Exploration Endowed Scholarship in the amount of $1,000. This award will contribute to her research on bottlenose dolphin population dynamics research in Pensacola, FL.
May 2013: Jessica Hearns won the NSF Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 $1400 for attending the PIMS IGTC Summer School “The Mathematics Behind Biological Invasions” in Edmonton, AL Canada.
April 2013: Madison Hall and her team won a total of $1500 in awards at the UCF 2013 Service Learning Showcase for teaching local elementary students about the global problem of marine debris. Awards included Best overall Project, Best in Graduate Studies, and the Award for Fostering Civil Responsibility.
April 2013:Alexis Maldonado and Tina Richards won best in the life and health sciences category at the UCF graduate research forum. They will be presenting at the statewide showcase at USF on the 19th.
April 2013: Monette Schwoerer was named President of the Graduate Student Association at UCF.
March 2013: BGSA hosted the Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference (SEEC) at the University of Central Florida with over 150 people in attendance.
March 2013: Molly Grace (Conservation Biology PhD, SPICE Lab) was awarded best graduate oral presentation for her talk entitled “Acoustically complex notes: a strategy for effective songbird communication in a noisy world?”.
February 2013: Monette Schwoerer was runner up for the Archie Carr Student Award: Experimental Conservation Oral Presentation at the 33rd Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation in Baltimore, MD.
January 2013: Karlie Carman, Ecosystem Processes and Services Laboratory, was awarded $2,191 from the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign for her MS work on plant-pollinator interactions across a disturbance gradient. Karlie will be spending another internship at Archbold Biological Station this summer as she continues her research.
2012
September 2012: Simona Ceriani (Conservation Biology PhD) published a paper entitled “Inferring Foraging Areas of Nesting Loggerhead Turtles Using Satellite Telemetry and Stable Isotopes ” in PLoS ONE. The paper is available online at the following URL: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045335 and the UCF press release is available here.
August 2012: Simona Ceriani received the Best Student Poster Award (2nd place) at the 8th International Conference of Applications of Stable Isotope Techniques to Ecological Studies (ISOECOL) held in Brest, France.
July 2012: Allyson Fenwick (Conservation Biology PhD) was hired as the Brown Visiting Assistant Professor by the Biology Department of Stetson University,
March 2012: Tyler Raszick (Biology MS) was awarded a $1000 grant from the Othropterists’ Society for his proposal titled, “Using RAD-tag Sequencing Techniques to Resolve a Population-level Phylogeny in Schistocerca lineata Scudder, 1899 (Orthoptera: Acrididae)”
March 2012: Simona Ceriani (Conservation Biology PhD) was awarded a $8,364 grant from the Sea Turtle Grant Program for her proposal titled “Using stable isotope analysis to infer post-nesting migration destination of loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta, L.) nesting at the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge”.
February 2012: Allyson Fenwick (Conservation Biology PhD) published a paper entitled “The Serpent and the egg: unidirectional evolution of reproductive mode in vipers?” in the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research.
2011
April 2011: Angela Tringali (Conservation Biology PhD) was awarded a $2000 grant from the American Museum of Natural History’s Frank M. Chapman Award for her proposal “Ornamented juveniles: evaluating alternatives to the evolution of ornamentation by sexual selection.”
March 2011: Simona Ceriani (Conservation Biology PhD) was awarded a $ 29,895 grant from the Sea Turtle Grant Program for her proposal titled, “Discovering new migratory pathways and the relationship between feeding ecology and reproductive output in loggerhead turtles nesting at the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge”.
March 2011: Rachel Odom (Biology MS) received a student research grant from the International Phycological Society for her proposal titled, “Genetic diversity of aquarium Chaetomorpha using ISSR analysis.”
February 2011: Stephanie Garvis (Biology MS) was invited to speak to the Central Florida Geographic Information Systems (CFGIS) user group. Her talk, “Quantifying changes in oyster coverage due to human impacts in Mosquito Lagoon, Florida” was delivered during their February 2011 meeting.
January 2011: Jessica Hightower (Biology MS) was just awarded the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award through the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University for her research titled, “Relating ancient Maya land use legacies to tropical tree species composition of Caracol, Belize.”
January 2011: Chris Catano (Biology MS) won the SEED award from the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping. Chris was selected based on his research proposal titled, “Using ALSM data to identify optimal habitat for the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus)”. This award is intended to provide data to graduate students early in their research program so that availability of such data may seed further research and support, building upon discoveries made possible by ALSM (Airborne Laser Swath Mapping) technology.
2010
August 2010: Simona Ceriani (Conservation Biology PhD) received the Outstanding Student Presentation Award awarded by the Comparative Nutrition Society during the 2010 Symposium held in Tucson, Arizona.
March 2010: Simona Ceriani (Conservation Biology PhD) was awarded a $ 8,518 grant from the Sea Turtle Grant Program for her proposal titled, “Investigating the relationship between feeding ecology and reproductive output in loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta L.) nesting at the Archie Carr NWR, Year 2”.