Sharks of the Pacific
Summer 2019
Co-PIs: Zachary Siders, Fabio Caltabellotta, Benjamin Baiser, Robert Ahrens The goal of this project is to synthesize taxonomic, phylogenetic, morphological, and niche breath diversity of pelagic sharks in the North Pacific. I constructed a highly resolved community phylogeny that incorporated the most up-to-date molecular data available for regional pool taxa. Relevant Publications:
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Mentoring
Colorado College alumna, Piper Boudart, completed a field-based resampling on a long term lichen community dataset from the Flat Tops Wilderness Area of Colorado. She reconstructed the community phylogeny of the lichen fungal symbiont and conducted community phylogenetic analysis of community assembly over time. She tested whether lichen communities showed signals of under- or over-dispersion within plots as well as across growth forms. |
University of Florida senior, Robert Feder, is working to determine land use types surrounding the urban pine rockland fragments resampled for my PhD work. His excellent GIS skills have allowed him to digitize the nested plot structure and perfect the habitat fragment shapes for this project. Robert is interested in describing changes in land use around these fragments over time and relating changes to metrics of fire diversity. You can find out more about Robert's research here. |
Ferns of Florida
Collaborators: Emily Sessa, Sally Chambers, Daijiang Li, Benjamin Baiser, Lorena Endara, and Gordon Burleigh
We assessed the phylogenetic and functional/morphological diversity of fern communities across two metrics of alpha diversity (mean pairwise distance and mean nearest taxon distance) at two spatial scales in Florida (counties and parks). We found mismatches in support for under- and over-dispersion in communities across both metric and spatial scale. Relevant publication: Sessa, Emily B., Sally M. Chambers, Daijiang Li, Lauren Trotta, Lorena Endara, J. Gordon Burleigh, and Benjamin Baiser. 2018. “Community Assembly of the Ferns of Florida.” American Journal of Botany 105 (3): 549–64. |