Recent News

Andrea Loayza (PhD 2009, Bolivia) successfully defended her PhD dissertation on April 10, 2009 and only a few days later gave birth to Daniel, who has made older brother Gustavo really happy!! Andrea was awarded a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant for her studies of seed dispersal and plant establishment of Guettarda in natural fragmented habitats of the Beni Biosphere Reserve and a graduate fellowship from the Department of Biology at UM-St. Louis for Winter Semester 2009.

T. Brandt Ryder (PhD 2008, advisor John Blake) just had a paper accepted in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, It takes two to tango: reproductive skew and social correlates of male mating success in a lek-breeding bird. Brandt is now on a post-doc at Smithsonian Institution with Dr. Peter Marra.

Renata Durães (PhD 2008) recently had a paper appear in accepted in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Female mate choice across spatial scales: influence of lek and male attributes on mating success of blue-crowned manakins. Renata is now at the Tropical Conservation Center at UCLA.

Kimberly Holbrook (PhD 2006) paper on Dispersal in a neotropical tree, Virola flexuosa (Myristicaceae): does hunting of large vertebrates limit seed removal? will appear shortly in the journal Ecology. Kimerbly is currently on a post-doctoral fellowship to work with Dr. Pedro Jordano at Estación Biológica de Doñana in Spain.

Bette Loiselle and John Blake will teach the upcoming OTS Graduate Specialty Course on Ecology and Conservation of Neotropical Birds in Costa Rica (14-27 May 2009).

Loiselle and her collaborators (Kimberly Holbrook, Denise Hardesty, David Westcott, John Blake, Gonzalo Rivas) received funding from the University of Missouri Research Board in early 2008 to support their comparative studies of effective seed dispersal in several Miconia species that are native in the Ecuadorian Amazon, but recent invaders in rain forests of ne Queensland, Australia.

Jose Hidalgo (MS student from Ecuador) received a research grant from the Whitney Harris World Ecology Center at UM-St. Louis in December 2008 to pursue his thesis research on reproductive strategies of Chiroxiphia pareola, the blue-backed manakin at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Ecuador. Jose also is working with the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at the Missouri Botanical Garden as a Research Assistant while pursuing his graduate studies at UMSL.

Gonzalo Rivas (MS student from Ecuador) received fellowships from the Organization for American States and the World Wildlife Fund (Russell Train Fellowship) to complete his MS program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. During summer 2008 he interned at CSIRO Tropical Forest Research Centre in Atherton, Queensland, Australia with Dr. B. Denise Hardesty and also conducted field work in Ecuador and lab and field work in Australia on population structure and seed dispersal of two Miconia species. In winter 2009, he took the OTS course in Costa Rica. Gonzalo will join the PhD program at UM-St. Louis in fall 2009.

Wendy Tori (PhD 2008) just finished her first semester as an Assistant Professor at Earlham College.

T. Patricia Feria (PhD 2007) just finished her first semester as an Assistant Professor at University of Texas-Pan American.

Eliot Miller (PhD student) recently was involved in the December 2008 Christmas Bird Count at Yanayacu station in Ecuador.

Last updated 2 May 2009.