Melissa E. Abdo is a conservation biologist who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Florida International University (FIU). She has led plant exploration and conservation efforts in biodiverse ecosystems around the world, including protected areas and mixed-use landscapes in South Florida, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.  Ms. Abdo’s primary research interests are in plant biogeography and integrated plant conservation.  She works to ground her research and ensure local/regional relevancy via an understanding of social-ecological systems underpinning a given (existing or planned) protected area. Ms. Abdo has both collaborated on and led multiple grant- and privately- funded projects through work with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (FTBG), the Institute for Regional Conservation, US-AID, and international NGOs and govertment agencies; most recently, she is focusing on applied conservation of Jamaica’s Cockpit Country as Principal Investigator of a MacArthur Foundation supported grant.  She speaks Spanish and Indonesian and resides in Miami.  Advised by Dr. Hong Liu, Ms. Abdo is pursuing her PhD through the FIU-FTBG graduate program on a study of the plant biogeography and species interactions between palms & fauna in Indonesia; this research will directly support conservation of the only national park in the historically significant region of North Maluku.   

Melissa Abdo

Beyte  Barrios

Beyte Barrios obtained her MS in the Department of Biological Sciences of FIU. Currently she is a PhD student in the plant ecology lab of Dr. Suzanne Koptur at FIU. Her work and research experience extend across different areas related to the biodiversity of plants. Her main interests are tropical forest plants, focusing on taxonomy, ecology and phenology. She is particularly interested in ecological problems associated with habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity.  Beyte's Ph.D. research focuses on the understory species of the South Florida pine rockland. She is particularly interested in their ecology, phenology and reproductive biology. Under the supervision of our Dr. Eric Von Wettberg she plans to conduct research on how habitat fragmentation affects the genetic structure of Angadenia berteroi a native plant of the South Florida pine rocklands.

Catherine Bravo obtained her B.Sc. in Biology after studying tree composition and diversity of mountain forests in Peru, her home country. She then worked in several environmental projects as part of the botany team. During the last few years, she worked as an educational and training assistant for the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), through the Global Programs and Partnerships Division, organizing and designing field courses for students and professionals from the Andean countries. More recently, Catherine was working for the Network of Conservation Educators & Practitioners, an initiative of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History to strengthen the capacity in science and conservation in Peruvian universities. Through her master studies, Catherine wants to study the dynamic of cloud forests in the Central Andes of Peru. Catherine is working under the supervision of Dr. Kenneth Feeley.

Catherine Bravo

          Jason Downing          

Sara Edelman

Tonya Fotinos is a Master student at FIU studying the population genetics and salt tolerance of rare plants under the supervision of Dr. Eric von Wettberg.  Her work will focus on a few species, both from South Florida, the Caribbean, and Mediterranean, and utilize a mixture of field, greenhouse, and laboratory approaches.  She comes to us from Austin, Texas, where she worked as a ecological research laboratory manager at the University of Texas.

         
Tonya Fotinos          

Patricia Houle is an Instructor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University where she teaches a variety of courses in the area of environmental studies.  Ms. Houle received a M.S. Degree in Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for several years in the medical device industry.  Subsequently she returned to graduate school and earned an M.S. degree in Environmental Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from Florida International University.  Ms. Houle is currently a doctoral student (Ed.D.) in the Department of Teaching and Learning at FIU under the supervision of Dr. George O’Brien. Her research interest is in environmental education and the environmental history of Florida.  For her dissertation Ms. Houle will be researching the writings of David Fairchild to examine his views on nature education during the early twentieth century and on the progressive movement in education, which was also taking place at that time.

Patricia Houle

Brian Machovina received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Florida International University, where he studied the ecology of Amphiuma means, a salamander, in Everglades National Park. He then spent several years as a research assistant at FIU studying seagrass communities in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Brian moved to Los Angeles to establish a rainforest conservation foundation, Oasis Preserve International, which helped establish the Los Amigos Conservation Concession and Los Amigos Biological Station in Amazonian Peru. Subsequently, he worked for several years with Guayaki Sustainable Rainforest Products, where he helped pioneer a rainforest-harvested tea, Guayaki Yerba Mate, as a model of market-driven conservation and reforestation. Brian was also the Executive Director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, a coalition of environmental advocacy organizations preventing water pollution and promoting kelp reforestation. Brian was also an owner and manager of Essential Living Foods, an importer of organic and wild-harvested commodities. Brian’s research interests for his doctoral degree at FIU involve the roles of agroeology in rainforest conservation. He will be undertaking his Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Kenneth Feeley.

Brian Machovina

 Robert McElderry is the current Lisa D. Anness Fellow in Tropical Plant Biology and his Ph.D. is being co-advised by Dr. Joyce Maschinski and Dr. Carol Horvitz.  While it is well known that periodic disturbance is often necessary in maintaining plant communities, Robert is working to understand how the effects of a disturbance regime are transmitted through host plants to their specialized insect herbivores.  In the fire-maintained pine rocklands of South Florida, the Florida leafwing (Anaea floridalis) uses pineland croton (Croton linearis) exclusively as its larval food plant.  Using a combination of ecological experiments and mathematical models, Robert will ask how leafwing population dynamics respond to the occurrence of fire, given the dependence of pineland croton on frequent fire.  With fire management a major consideration for the mitigation of leafwing population decline, a stochastic model incorporating resource and leafwing population dynamics along with the random occurrence of fire is key in testing fire management strategies to find the plan that optimizes the long-term outlook for persistence of the Florida leafwing.

         
Robert McElderry          

Damian Nesbeth hails from the Caribbean island of Jamaica, land of wood and water. As a science educator, he has taught at a high school in addition to being a lecturer in Biological Sciences at the University of Technology, Jamaica.  With the assistance of his advisor, Dr. Eric Von Wettberg, Damian will be studying conservation genetics to identify the ability of species to survive the challenges of a changing world with the goal of identifying those species at risk and where we may need to concentrate conservation efforts.  As a husband and father of two children, he would like to contribute towards the preservation of Earth’s beauty for them to enjoy, the way he does.

Damian Nesbeth

Evan Rehm

Rosa Rodríguez

Vanessa Sánchez

Vanessa Sánchez obtained her B.A. in Biology with a research specialization from St. Thomas University (STU). As a Science and Mathematics Fellow at STU, she worked at Dr. Pilar Maul's Plant Biology Lab, where she conducted research in the micropropagation of plants through plant tissue culture, in species like Lupinus westianus, a federally protected Florida plant, and Hippeastrum.She also worked in developing a sensitive quantitative real  time PCR assay for the detection of Avocado Sunblotch Viroid (ASBVd). Vanessa worked at the USDA-ARS-SHRS for two years at the Ornamentals and Genetics Plant Laboratory, under the supervision of Dr. Alan Meerow, where she gained extensive experience both generating and analyzing microsatellite DNA and targeted DNA sequences. She is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Agroecology at FIU, under the direction of Dr. Eric vonWettberg and Dr. Krish Jayachandran.

Klara Scharnagl obtained her B.A. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Chicago. While there, she volunteered with graduate students under the direction of Thorsten Lumbsch in the mycology department of the Field Museum in Chicago. In 2011 Klara received the prestigious Young Botanist Award from the Botanical Society of America. She now volunteers with Rick and Jean Seavey, lichenologists in Everglades National Park. Following her B.A. she began to pursue a B.Sc. in Biology at FIU, and has transitioned from that into an M.S. in Environmental Studies with the Agroecology Program at FIU. Her thesis, under the direction of Dr. Eric vonWettberg and Prof. Krish Jayachandran (Department of Earth and the Environment of FIU), will focus on mycorrhizal communities of native legumes of south Florida, and how species found in these communities may have colonized leguminous crops in south Florida. Her particular interest is in species interaction on both the fungal/fungal and fungal/plant levels. In summer 2011 she participated in a month-long internship surveying fungal biodiversity in the forests of northern Thailand. She will also present a poster on her research in Thailand at the annual meeting of the Mycological Society of America in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Klara Scharnagl

James Stroud

James Stroud completed his B.Sc. (Hons) in Zoology and Conservation from the University of Wales, Bangor, focusing his dissertation research on the habitat factors affecting herpetofauna community composition in a tropical rainforest (Sulawesi, Indonesia), with the assistance of Dr. Graeme Gillespie and Dr. Wolfgang Wüster. Following this he completed his M.Sc. by Research at the Centre for Environmental and Marine Sciences (CEMS) at the University of Hull (Great Britain), under the supervision of Dr. Philip Wheeler. His primary research involved investigating the spatial ecology of the European adder (Vipera berus) in commercially managed forest plantations and testing the suitability of patch occupancy modelling for monitoring of this species. His research interests are broad, with a general interest in landscape and community ecology, often using herpetofauna as model species and study systems. Other areas of interest include behavioural ecology, evolution of (polymorphic) mating systems, terrestrial vertebrate ecology and invasion biology.

Emily Warschefsky

A native Michigander, Emily Warschefsky moved to the Miami heat after receiving her B.A. in Biology from Reed College. She is now pursuing her PhD in Biology in Dr. Eric von Wettberg’s lab at FIU. Her academic interests in botany are rooted in species interactions – particularly hybridization and plant-microbe symbioses – and their relationship to plant distribution and speciation. Beyond botany, Emily enjoys: swamp walks, lichens, pie-baking, jam-canning, quilting, rock climbing, and canoeing.

Wyatt Sharber is the 2011 Lisa D. Anness Fellow in Tropical Plant Biology, co-advised by Dr. Barbara Whitlock and Dr. Carl Lewis. He graduated from Oklahoma State University with a B.S. in Botany and Zoology. While at Oklahoma State, he studied the species boundaries of the subtropical milkweed, Asclepias pringlei (Greenm.) Woodson. In his co-advised position at the University of Miami and the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden, Wyatt plans to study the systematics of tropical milkweeds (Family Apocynaceae), particularly in regards to trait evolution, biogeography, and conservation.

Wyatt Sharber