Lab News Archive

April 2011: Christine Lucas, PhD! Congratulations to Christine on the successful defense of her thesis "SUCCESSIONAL DYNAMICS AND SEEDLING REGENERATION IN AMAZONIAN FLOODPLAIN FORESTS".

March 2011: Our paper on the distribution of research in the Andes and Amazon was highlighted on Mongabay.com...you can read more here. Kudos to lead author Nigel Pitman and UF graduate students & co-authors Gaby Stocks, Lisa Seales, and Franklin Paniagua.

March 2011: Ernane wins a Compton Fellowship to study the spread and impact of leaf-cutter ants in Brazil!

January 2011: Emilio named the Graduate Teacher & Advisor of the year in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Really.

October 2010: John Maron came for a visit and presented a great seminar.

August 2010: New semester...and new lab members! Congratulations to Christine and Marcelo on the birth of their son.

August 2010: Cris Jurinitz succesfully defends her doctoral thesis at USP! Congratulations to Dra. Cris.

August 2010: Congratulations to Shannon Moore! She won the award for the outstanding oral presentation at the 2010 SSTP Symposium.

April 2010: Semester ends! Time to relax, do a little writing...

March 2010: Orou Gaoue is visiting to give a seminar and trade ideas about plant demography.

February 2010: Emilio is back, as is Christine. Fabiane Mundim is joining the lab as a new PhD student.

August 2009: Emilio is off to Brazil for his sabbatical at the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. He will be back on campus February 1st, 2010.

July 2009: Stella Copeland successfully defended her Master's thesis, and is now off to the Ph.D. program in Ecology at UC Davis. Congratulations, Stella - we'll miss you!

June 2009: Ernane and Christine have been racking up scholarships, travel awards, and summer research funding courtesy of the TCD program and CALS. See the announcement for Christine's awards here.

May 2009: Irina presented her Senior Thesis and is now a graduate of the University of Florida. She join's Rob Fletcher's Lab in the Fall to start working on her MS. Congratulations Irina!

2-25-09
Yesterday we found out Stella is an NSF Predoctoral Fellow. We celebrated.

4-2-2008
Yesterday we found out Stella is an NSF Predoctoral Fellow. We celebrated.

3-25-2008
Great news...Irina has been named a 2008 CALS University Scholar! She will be doing her Senior Thesis at the Ordway-Swisher Biological Station, where she will study nutirent limitation and its effects on long-leaf pine savannas. See more at http://cals.ufl.edu/undergraduate/UniversityScholars.html

3-17-2008
Gwen is a Master of Science! Congrats on defending her thesis, whose title is "Seedling recruitment as a driver of species richness in the understory of longleaf pine savanna". Gwen will take a few weeks off before starting her nrew job with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory.

12-10-07
Yes! Antonio passes his qualifying exam with flying colors! He is now a PhD candidate and is getting ready for a busy field season.

8-23-07
Drum roll please...A paper by the Cerrado Research Group (knows as EIPA in Brazil) has been awarded the 2007 Award for Excellence in Tropical Biology and Conservation. The award is given by the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation to the outstanding article published in the journal Biotropica. The paper is available for donwload on the Publications page. Congratulations to Heraldo et al.! You can read the award announcement here (Award of Excellence pdf).

Vasconcelos, H. L., E. H. M. Vieira-Neto, F. M. Mundim, and E. M. Bruna. 2006. Roads alter the colonization dynamics of a keystone herbivore in Neotropical savannas. Biotropica 38(5):661-665)

An article about the research in the UF Inside IFAS magazine is here

8-22-07
Welcome back! Fall semester is finally here. our new student Stella has arrived, and Antonio is back from a tough summer of field work. Gwen and Christine are in the field collecting boatloads of cool data. And it's really hot.

6-5-07
Back from two weeks of fieldwork in Uberlandia (sampling biomass and soils) and a trip to Sao Paulo (to meet with Cris and Alexandre). Things are quiet...everyone else is in the field.

4-24-07
More good news for Christine! She was awarded an IAF (Inter-American Foundation) Grassroots Development Fellowship to support her research on forest regeneration in Amazonian flooded forests.

4-24-07
Dr. Marcello Tabarelli (UFPE-Brazil) arrived today for a quick visit. In addition to talking more about Antonio's project, He, Ariadna, and I will be discussing some collaborative manuscripts on fragmentation and plant reproduction.

4-18-07
Christine passed her qualifying exams with flying colors! She is now officially a Ph.D. Candidate, and is off to Brazil to do field work. Congratulations, Christine!

12-13-06
...and stayed busy. The semester flew by, with everyone working hard on field work (Gwen), classes (Antonio, Christine, Irina) or papers (Ariadna, Selene). Enjoy the break!

9-6-06
A new semester is now underway...things got very busy very quickly...

5-15-06
Summertime...things got quiet around here! Christine and Gwen are in the field, Ian is preparing for his move to NC State, Matt is roaming the southeast, and Emilio is getting ready to leave for Brazil. Ariadna has returned and is getting settled, while Antonio slaves away on his proposal.

4-20-06
Ian successfully defends his MS Thesis! The title is "Demographic studies of plants: data limitations and spatial sampling methods".

4-19-06
Emilio's brother Sean, a doctoral student at UNM, has a web page. Find him at http://www.unm.edu/~sbruna/bio.html.

4-10-06
Good news for Christine! She received a grant from WFT to pay for her summer field research in Brazil.

10-26-05
Matt successfully defends his MS Thesis! The title is "Ant occupancy and ant-herbivore defense of Cordia alliodora, a Neotropical myrmecophyte".

9-16-05
Diego Andrés Delamônica Bruna has arrived! 3.6 kg and 51 cm - mom and baby are doing fine.

9-5-05
Welcome back! Christine and Emilio spent the summer conducting fieldwork in Brazil, while Matt and Ian were in Gainesville working on their theses and collecting ants in the Natural Area Teaching Lab. Gwen and Antonio have arrived and are getting settled in.