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Recently, my colleagues and I named three new Everglades diatom species after much morphological analyses and taxonomic detective work. While the Everglades diatom community may not be as species-rich as lakes in more temperate environments, there are many species waiting to receive a proper name and publication. The reason that so many species continue to be called "species number 17" or "looks like this other species but not quite" is because there just has not been the kind of focused taxonomic research here in subtropical and tropical places in the Western hemisphere. Contrast this to the hundreds of years of research on European diatoms. The Everglades diatom community offers great opportunities for graduate students, like me, to investigate and describe new species! Everglades periphyton with four live cells of  Mastogloia calcarea at 1000x magnification For the FIU News article, click here: http://news.fiu.edu/2013/09/ algae-researcher-names-three- new-specie...

A few weeks ago, I attended my first national conference, Botanical Society of America’s Botany 2013 Celebrating Diversity! (BSA) in New Orleans, LA. Here are 7 lessons I learned along the way: 1 )       Go to the big conferences, even if you don’t have a lot of data yet I just finished up my first year of my PhD program, and I didn't have a lot of “real” data to speak of. So I did what I could, and presented a poster outlining my doctoral thesis proposal. Unexpectedly, I got so much valuable, constructive feedback from experts in my field.  I really valued this experience, because at this stage in my program, that feedback provided me with new perspectives on my project before I execute it. Plus, I got to know PI’s, post-docs, and graduate students from other universities that expressed interest in collaborating with me in the future. 2 )       Attend the student professional development luncheons, mixers, etc. At BSA, there were ...

What is algae? This seems like a very simple and easy to answer question. Surprisingly though, many people (even those doing research on specific groups of algae like me), have a tough time answering this question. Mainly, I think this is because we rarely get this question from other people (scientists or laypeople). Also, since science often encourages you to focus your research questions, we rarely have to even think about how a specific group of algae is related to other groups of algae, or how algae fits into the evolutionary scheme of other living organisms (are algae plants or animals?...).  Anabaena , a common genus of cyanobacteria (aka "blue-green algae"). Previously, I blogged about diatoms that live in periphyton in the Everglades, and what I do to periphyton to remove all the other algae that obscure the diatoms I want to study. So far, I haven't explained what algae is at all, and only explained that diatoms are a special group of algae with cell walls m...

Pine Rockland post-fire Big Pine Key, FL      As I start the first field season of my dissertation research, I am starting to get the sensation that I have jumped onto a sinking ship 1 . My chosen ecological system, the pine rocklands (see photo Big Pine Key), has a laundry list of complex and entangled threats—invasions of plant and insect species, habitat fragmentation, climate change, hurricanes, floods, fire suppression, and of course, since it is only found only within south Florida and Caribbean islands, sea level rise (SLR).                          The majority of my research does not directly incorporate SLR into the hypotheses, but rather focuses on examining landscape patterns and metacommunity dynamics that will help guide conservation and management practices. Yet, I still find myself concerned with the long-term persistence of the endemic and/or endangered species (48 plants...

PhD students at FIU are required to teach a lab for two semesters.  So, for the past two semesters I have been a teaching assistant (TA) for   Ecology lab  and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  A typical ecology lab consists of a large majority of pre-professional students (pre -med, -dental, -vet, etc.) who need an upper-level elective.  Translation:  many students are enrolled in Ecology because they have to.  I don't expect my students to change their career paths and become ecologists; I simply want them to understand why ecology is important.   Memorizing terminology and examples, while they have their place, are not as useful in the long-term – it’s the experiences and hands-on activities we remember.    I am an ecologist and all I remember from my undergraduate ecology class is going out to my university’s nature preserve looking at species abundances and distributions.   If a student who is preparing for a career in e...

The following is a guest post by Richard Kern, a film maker, lecturer, and co-founder of Odyssey Earth . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am not a scientist. I like to say I’m a student of life, a naturalist in training. Yet somehow I’ve fallen into a profession where science is the pivot-point of everything I do. Interesting career path for someone who took 8 credits of Shakespeare in college. So what, really, was the point of getting a degree in something called “Literary and Cultural Studies?!” Wildlife filmmaking is a craft in which the left and right hemispheres of the brain are constantly colliding. The trick is figuring out how two different modalities of thought can blend together harmoniously. Easier said than done, but when you can make that happen you’re on your way to effective science communication. Lucky for me, I was raised by a mother and father who both earned degr...

Hi all, Check out my post on the Oikos blog about subsidy regulation in the Everglades! Click on the link below to read the entire story Oikos blog full story