Former ENTO grad student Chong Chin Heo (Tomberlin student) receives major research award from Malaysian Government
[Entomology at TAMU]
PhD student Carolyn Hodo (S Hamer lab; VIBS) presenting her research on lesions and poxviruses at the American College of Veterinary Pathologists (ACVP) annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. Nice job, Carolyn!
Erin Buchholtz is a PhD Fellow with Ecoexist, an NGO in Botswana (Africa) which aims to reduce human-elephant conflict and promote coexistence (one of its directors is TAMU professor Dr. Amanda Stronza). Erin is conducting her field work in Botswana on the landscape ecology of elephant movements and conflict. She is seen in the photo assisting with taking measurements of a tranquilized female elephant near Ikoga village in the Okavango Panhandle. Watch the award-winng documentary ” The Ecoexist Project: Pathways to Coexistence.” (Photo by Graham McCulloch)
Aleyda Galán (Jessica Light lab) holding an evening bat, Nycticeius humeralis. This bat was netted as part of a biodiversity assessment across south Texas, funded by the East Foundation. Aleyda is part of an elite team employing a variety of field techniques to explore terrestrial vertebrate diversity. A large proportion of Texas, especially south Texas, is private land and vertebrate diversity is not well known due to lack of access to these lands. Aleyda and her colleagues are taking the first, important, steps to document south Texas biodiversity to provide information for future conservation efforts.
Dr. Sarah Hamer, PhD students (Johanna Harvey and Miranda Bertram), and undergraduate students Alyssa Martin and Christopher Sandoval examining bird and mammal specimens for ticks outside of the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections (BRTC). The goal of this research is to assess tick-borne pathogens in our local fauna and assess potential disease risk for wildlife, livestock, and humans.
Dr. Ron Eytan, faculty in EEB and located at the TAMU Galveston, and Jimmy-Arguelles Jiménez, a graduate student at Universidad Veracruzana, are processing reef fishes collected while scuba diving in the Southern Gulf Mexico, off the Yucatan Peninsula, during the summer of 2016. Dr. Eytan and Jimmy were part of a multi-national expedition organized by Nuno Simoes of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Photo by Jesse Cancelmo.
The Department of Biology offers the Big Bend Natural History course. Click on the link below to read or download the flyer with some of the details. We have several undergrads from various departments who have expressed an interest in the course. We would also like to have a few graduate students along for the course to help teach and mentor. If you are interested, contact Dr. David Baumgardner. Big Bend Natural History Course Flyer, Summer 2016 (PDF)
Congratulations to PhD candidate Grace Smarsh (Smotherman lab)! She received 1st Place for student talks at the International Bat Research Conference in Durban, South Africa. Grace’s presentation was on “Territorial Singing in the African Heart-Nosed Bat.” As part of the award, she received a Pettersson D500x bat recorder with microphone (nice!)
Way to go, Grace!
Welcome to Jason Martina, EEB’s new coordinator of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Doctoral Program and Applied Biodiversity Science Program. Jason earned his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Plant Biology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior working on the impacts of plant invasion on carbon and nitrogen cycling in Michigan wetlands. Read more about Jason here.
Meet EEB PhD student Rachael Glazner. Rachael is currently funded by the Texas A&M University at Galveston 2-Year Competitive Graduate Student Fellowship.
For her field work this summer, Rachael is using camera traps to study the distribution of wading birds in different foraging habitat types in Galveston, Texas.
