RESEARCH
Pine Rockland Community EcologyPine rockland is a globally critically imperiled ecosystem found along the Miami Rock Ridge in South Florida with allied habitats found in the Florida Keys, The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. This historically fire maintained habitat is perched atop exposed an exposed limestone substrate and has a characteristic overstory of South Florida Slash pine, a sparse mid-story of palms and shrubs and a hyperdiverse layer of graminoids and herbs. Explosive growth of the Miami metropolitan area has resulted in habitat loss and fragmentation, fire suppression, and the introduction of non-indigenous species. Today pine rockland habitat occupies less that 2% of its historic footprint outside of Everglades National Park.
My work in pine rocklands focuses on the habitat fragments embedded in urban Miami-Dade. I am interested in the ecology as well as the management of this imperiled ecosystem. Click here to find out more about my projects. Keywords: Community assembly, community phylogenetic methods, invasion, management of imperiled ecosystems, long term ecosystem sampling |
Barcoding Sandhill FoodwebsDuring the Summer of 2017 I lead the field and laboratory based effort to sample real-time grasshopper-plant food webs at the UF Ordway-Swisher Biological Station. We sampled the gut contents of grasshoppers across Sandhill habitat and reconstructed a snapshot of highly detailed foodwebs. Click here to find out more.
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Pitcher Plant VoyageDuring the Summer of 2016 I was a member of the team that traveled along the east coast of North America to sample the aquatic microbial communities found in the leaves of the Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea). Learn more about this voyage here.
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