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Sea Turtle Nesting Season Winds Down on a High
Florida’s sea turtle nesting surveying comes to a close on Halloween and like everything else in 2020, the season was a bit weird. The number of green sea turtle nests on central and southern Brevard County, Florida beaches monitored by University of Central biologists were way up during a year they should have been down […]
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UCF alumna leads Arboretum’s environmental initiatives, controlled burns
BY SHEA DAWSON As Jennifer Elliott sat in the UCF Arboretum office, a small trailer behind the Harris Corporation Engineering Center, an Arboretum staff member entered with bad news: the Cuban tree frogs were back. Cuban tree frogs are an invasive species in Florida that often eat native tree frogs and lizards. Elliott sighed. Though she […]
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UCF Student Studies Algal Blooms Impact on Sea Turtles in Indian River Lagoon
By Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala Long before the algal blooms on Florida’s Gulf Coast sparked surprise and outrage, University of Central Florida doctoral student Chris Long was studying the effects of similar episodes on threatened green sea turtles in the Indian River Lagoon. Algae blooms regularly hit the Indian River Lagoon and were especially intense from 2011 […]
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Couple’s $6.6M Gift Will Boost Many UCF Programs
What do sea turtles, veterans, language programs, science and football have in common? They’ll all be better off thanks to the generosity of Jim and Julia Rosengren, who have committed $6.6 million to support those programs at the University of Central Florida. It is among the largest alumni commitments in university history. Combined with their […]
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The Lost Years of Sea Turtles
by Barbara Abney University of Central Florida biologist whose groundbreaking work tracking the movements of sea turtle yearlings in the North Atlantic Ocean attracted international attention has completed a similar study in the South Atlantic with surprising results. South Atlantic sea turtles do not passively ride prevailing currents as historically assumed, but instead actively swim […]
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Knight Life: The UCF Turtle Team
It’s 9:30 p.m., the sun is down, and your shift is about to start. You put on your long pants, long-sleeved shirt, bug jacket and fanny pack with your nightly turtle kit. Out on the beach in Brevard County, in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, you’re starting your search for nesting female sea turtles. […]
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A Knight for the Sea Turtles
The University of Central Florida College of Sciences and Department of Biology hosted ‘A Knight for the Sea Turtles’ in Melbourne Beach on Friday, November 18, 2016. The event celebrated UCF’s partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The partnership, announced over the summer, establishes a permanent conservation research facility along the southern Brevard County coastline. […]
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Hurricane Impacts Threatened Sea Turtle Nests
Story by Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala, UCF Today As many as 200 loggerhead sea turtle nests and 550 green turtle nests were estimated to have been lost in central and southern Brevard County because of Hurricane Matthew. Each nesting season thousands of threatened sea turtles lay nests along Central Florida’s coast, particularly on the shores of […]
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Permanent Home for Sea Turtle Research
Story by Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala, UCF Today The University of Central Florida and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have reached a historic agreement that will establish a permanent conservation research facility along the Brevard County coastline. UCF has run a sea turtle monitoring and research program on the beaches of the Archie Carr National Wildlife […]
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STEM Day at UCF
On Friday, April 8, more than one thousand students from the Central Florida area spilled on to UCF campus for STEM day. STEM day is a bi-annual outreach event for K-12 students interested in learning more about the study of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The day featured a wide variety of activities focused on STEM […]
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Presenting Sea Turtles in Peru
CENTRAL FLORIDA FUTURE – Isabelle D’Antonio, Contributing Writer In February 2016, hundreds of sea turtle enthusiasts and researchers from around the world will gather in Lima, Peru, for the 36th annual International Sea Turtle Symposium to present their research and discuss conservation efforts. This year, junior Abigail Hudak, UCF biology major, will be one of […]
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UCF’s Mansfield Keynote Speaker at International Sea Turtle Symposium
Biology assistant professor Kate Mansfield, Ph.D., and five of her graduate students headed to Turkey last week to present at the 35th annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation. Mansfield, who earlier this month gained international attention for a study about young turtles swimming with a purpose, is one of the four keynote speakers. Her topic is “Out […]
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Sea Turtle Myth Busted
It turns out sea turtles, even at a tender 6-18 months of age, are very active swimmers. They don’t just passively drift in ocean currents as researchers once thought. NOAA and University of Central Florida researchers say it’s an important new clue in the sea turtle “lost years” mystery. Where exactly turtles travel in their first years of life, […]