Category: Conservation - Conservation & Molecular Ecology @Brown

Conservation & Molecular Ecology @Brown

Congratulations all around!

5/14/2020

The lab has much to celebrate as we close out another semester, even despite the disruptions of COVID-19.

Congratulations to Patrick Freeman for earning a Masters based on a thesis comparing ecological hypotheses about the distributions of plants and large herbivores in Kenya!
Congratulations to incoming Voss postdoc Colin Donihue for publishing several high-impact papers, including one featured on the cover of PNAS (generating a buzz in the NY Times and elsewhere) and one in Nature Ecology and Evolution!
Congratulations to Courtney Reed for winning a grant from the American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration & Field Research!
Congratulations to seniors graduating with amazing research accomplishments: Amanda Lyons (Honors), Catherine Porter, and Violet Sackett!
Congratulations to Amanda Lyons '20 for admission into Brown's 5th year Masters program to conduct research on diamondback terrapins in collaboration with governmental and non-profit partners, and with generous support from a Diamondback Terrapin Working Group Grant!
Congratulations to Cate Porter '20 for admission into the University of Virginia's Environmental Science graduate program!
Congratulations to Jen Guyton (Princeton PhD) for earning the cover of Nature Ecology and Evolution based on our work to understand and restore the ecosystems of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique!
Congratulations to Ashley Bang '19 on her upcoming position in Lian Pin Koh's lab at the National University of Singapore!

Welcoming Chrishen Gomez

3/5/2020

Chrishen Gomez is the recipient of a prestigious 2019 Merdeka Award Grant from Malaysia, which was established “to reward citizens and organizations who have made outstanding contributions in their respective fields to the people of Malaysia.”

Chrishen joins the lab for three months as a Visiting Research Associate affiliated with EEB. During his visit, Chrishen will collaborate on DNA-based analyses of animal diets and genetics. Chrishen aims to apply these approaches and his affiliation with the Bornean Carnivore Program to establish a conservation genetics research program that focuses on the Sunda Clouded Leopard in Malaysia.

Check out Chrishen's Merdeka Award acceptance speech to learn about his amazing research and conservation efforts in Borneo!

Diamondback Terrapin Working Group Meeting

10/28/2019

Amanda Lyons presented a poster at the recent 2019 Diamondback Terrapin Working Group meeting in Wilmington, NC. The presentation shared information about Amanda's innovative turtle-trapping methods, the benefits of capture-mark-release studies for understanding the ecology of the species, and new work in the Kartzinel Lab to apply molecular tools to our understanding of terrapin biology. The presentation was co-authored by grad-student mentor Bianca Brown, and earned a prize as one of the best student presentations--a testament to the impacts of our conservation research and Voss Undergraduate Fellows programs. Congratulations to Amanda and Bianca for this excellent contribution!

Paper featured on the cover of Nature & in media

6/5/2019

New research combining large field experiments and molecular ecology published today in Nature. The paper is featured in a Nature News & Views article by Oswald Schmitz, a 3-min Nature Video, a great PBS NOVA article by Katherine Wu, among others.

2019 Diamondback Terrapin Conservation Genetics Field Season

4/16/2019

Last week, Amanda Lyons (left) and Bianca Brown (right) braved the rainy weather to kick off our terrapin field season. Diamondback terrapins are the only "critically imperiled" reptile in Rhode Island, and a major conservation priority for the state. Amanda and Bianca were joined by our collaborators from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and The Roger Williams Park Zoo. Our research goal is to understand how genetically interconnected are the remaining few terrapin populations in the state, and relatedness to populations from neighboring states. This research is supported in part by a 2019 Voss Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Environmental Science and Communication to Amanda Lyons. Congratulations Amanda, and thanks IBES for supporting this research.

If only the weather had been better for setting up the study sites!

Patrick Freeman presents on collaboration with the National Park Service

4/15/2019

Patrick Freeman presented a poster at the IBES Blue Sky that focuses on our ongoing collaboration with Yellowstone National Park. We are working with the National Park Service to elucidate changes in the diets of GPS-collared large-mammal species over the course of their annual migrations. The research that Patrick presented was the culmination of our semester-long research project in BIOL 1515/2015 last fall (he was an amazing TA!). Class participants received dietary samples from the park, extracted DNA from them, performed DNA metabarcoding to analyze animal diets, and prepared reports for the patterns at the park. In this CURE-formatted course, students have a real-world conservation impact. Thanks, Patrick, for your leadership on this project and for presenting your work. This class will be even more exciting and impactful when we offer it again in 2020, thanks to support from HHMI and The Sheridan Center for Teaching & Learning.

Welcomes, fieldwork, and research updates

10/7/2018

As the fall semester gets into swing, the lab is having a lot of fun and making progress on research. Several milestones should not go unnoticed, and there are photos to boot. In no particular order:

A big WELCOME to the lab for PhD student Courtney Reed! Courtney joined us this summer, having recently completed a Masters at Harvard in Hopi Hoekstra's lab.
CONGRATULATIONS to PhD candidate Bianca Brown, who passed her qualifying exams and advanced to candidacy last week!
We had a wildly fun and successful field team representing our lab and others from Brown University in Kenya this summer, including Loren Albert (Voss postdoc fellow, Kellner lab), Patrick Freeman, Courtney Reed, Jesse Tarnas (Mustard lab), and Molly Magid (Voss undergrad fellow).
Ashley Bang's summer research was featured on the NOAA website for Estuary Week in September.
Brian Gill spent a month interfacing with Conservancy managers to address conservation challenges in Kenya, where he lost count of rhino sightings and yet still managed to submit an excellent manuscript for publication while on the road.

Conservation lessons from large-mammal manipulations in East Africa

5/16/2018

An extensive review by Goheen et al. was just released as a contribution to The Year in Ecology and Conservation Biology series. The paper details major conservation lessons learned through large-scale and long-term experiments involving large-mammal communities in Kenya -- an important set of lessons for ecologists and conservation biologists provided by an inspirational team of researchers and collaborators.

ENVS Lunchtime Seminar - March 15th

3/8/2018

ENVS Lunchtime Seminar with Tyler Kartzinel
Thursday, March 15th, 12:00-12:50PM
UEL 106 Classroom, 135 Angell Street
Lunch will be provided!

Tyler Kartzinel is an Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology & Environment and Society. Brown students will learn about new courses being offered, including Conservation Biology in the Genomics Age, and unique research opportunities focusing on conservation biology in the Kartzinel Lab.

In the Field with Biodiversity Initiative

1/13/2017

Thanks to a new, inspiring conservation organization — Biodiversity Initiative — for inviting our lab to join research and conservation efforts in the understudied tropical forests of Equatorial Guinea.

Highlights from a brief visit include:

A workshop with government officials (and other stakeholders) to discuss opportunities to better conserve wildlife and protected areas.
Hiking with a bushmeat hunter to learn about the first links in the wildlife trafficking chain—the way legal trapping of wildlife by local subsistence hunters can feed into international crime through the trade of endangered species, like pangolin. (Importantly, hunting was forbidden during my visit.)
The magnificence of a primary Congo Rainforest on Equatorial Guinea's mainland.