Pedro Quintana-Ascencio, Professor

Research Area(s): Interactive effects of disturbance and spatial structure on plant community and population dynamics, especially for several rare plant species endemic to the Lake Wales Ridge in central Florida.

David G. Jenkins, Professor

Research Areas: Metacommunity ecology and ecological biogeography, including invasion biology and macroecology.

I. Jack Stout, Professor emeritus

Research Areas: Conservation biology of Florida, including beach mice, gopher tortoise, and lupines.

Jason Schroeder, PhD candidate

Research: Jason is working on beta diversity: how robust is it to error, how does it respond to community assembly “filters”, and how well does it reflect community structure and habitat quality at multiple spatial scales?

Danny Gooding, PhD candidate

Research: Danny studies spatial patterns of coral reef health off the southeast Florida coast, with the goal to determine drivers of patterns, Hopefully, results will help understand the decline of Florida’s coral reefs and provide a guide for conservation efforts.

Hannah Bevan, PhD student

Research: For her MS, Hannah modeled the potential global range of the Nile monitor and its potential food web effects. She is now aiming to work on multi-species distributions relative to land use and conservation corridors.

Federico Lopez Borghesi, PhD Student

Research: Broadly, I am interested on the interplay between plant reproductive physiology and population level dynamics. My project aims to find novel ways to frame seed ecophysiology studies to inform plant demography models.

Jacob D. Hart, PhD Student

Research:My research examines how disturbance and productivity influence biodiversity in freshwater communities of plants and invertebrates. With this project, I hope to provide a thorough experimental evaluation of the dynamic equilibrium model of biodiversity.

Haoyu Li, MS student

Research: My undergraduate research focused on the community dynamics of mangroves on South China Sea coast under human disturbance. Now I am especially interested in using models to improve our understandings on the impact of invasive species under global climate change.

Elizabeth Perez, MS student

Research: My goal is to explore the potential sources of dispersal of Pomacea Maculata, an invasive apple snail, through a mark-recapture project. Both ditches and seasonal flooding have been proposed as potential dispersal means.