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BIOLOGY PROFESSOR WINS HYNES AWARD

Biology assistant professor Amanda Subalusky won the 2020 Hynes Award for New Investigators from the Society for Freshwater Science.  The Hynes Award recognizes the freshwater scientist who was senior author of an outstanding primary publication that appeared in print in the last three years.  The award-winning publication was her 2017 Proceedings of the National Academy […]

Biology Professor Coauthors Two Papers in Science on Forest Dynamics

Associate Professor Jeremy Lichstein coauthored two recent papers on forest dynamics in the journal Science. The first paper, titled “Demographic trade-offs predict tropical forest dynamics,” used data from a tropical forest in Panama and a computer simulation model to show that two ecological tradeoffs – one between growth and survivorship, and another between early reproduction […]

Biology Grad Student Receives Botanical Society Award

Biology graduate student Annika Smith (Ph.D. student in the Soltis Laboratory of Molecular Systematics & Evolutionary Genetics) has received the 2020 Kaplan Award from the Botanical Society of America.  The Donald R. Kaplan Award supports graduate student research in plant comparative morphology. This $10,000 prize will support Annika’s research entitled, “Vascular architecture and synorganization in […]

Biology Professor Receives Diversity Champion Award

Biology Assistant Professor Joe Ryan has been awarded the UF 2020 Graduate Education Diversity Champion Award. This award recognizes a faculty or staff member who has enhanced the graduate environment by promoting diversity and improving cross-cultural understanding and inclusivity. This commitment includes taking a leadership role in promoting diversity as Dr. Ryan has done in […]

Biology Grad Student Receives Prestigious Post-doc Award

Biology graduate student Leslie Kollar (McDaniel Lab) has been awarded a National Science Foundation Plant Genome Research Program Postdoctoral Fellowship.  She will be working in the Department of Plant Biology at Michigan State University to study the function and evolution of regulatory elements in the development of different, locally adapted populations of the yellow monkeyflower (Mimulus […]

Biology Faculty Aid Efforts to Fight Covid-19

Biology professor Ana Longo discussed One Health and research on the corona virus in a column for the Puerto Rican publication ENDI ElNuevoDia.com.  Biology professors José Miguel Ponciano and Ana Longo co-authored an article for PlazaPublica on the corona virus pandemic in Guatemala:  “Covid19: Origen, tendencias actuales y escenarios para Guatemala”.  For more information see […]

BIOLOGY GRAD STUDENTS RECEIVE PRESTIGIOUS POST-DOCTORAL AWARDS

Three Biology graduate students, Andre Naranjo (P. Soltis Lab), Jenna Moore (Paulay Lab) and Pat Milligan (Palmer Lab) have been awarded National Science Foundation grants to support their post-doctoral research.  Andre Naranjo received his award from the NSF Interdisciplinary Research Using Biological Collections Program to study spatial, functional and phylogenetic diversity of vascular plants in […]

BIOLOGY GRAD STUDENT PAPER HIGHLIGHTED BY JOURNAL EDITOR

A paper authored by Biology Department PhD student John Park  and coauthored by two UF faculty (Jeremy Lichstein, Biology; Stephanie Bohlman, School of Forest Resources and Conservation)  was selected as an “Editor’s Choice” by the journal Remote Sensing. The study used images acquired from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or ‘drones’) and a machine-learning algorithm to […]

NEW RESEARCH FROM ACCSTR EXPLAINS SEA TURTLE FONDNESS FOR PLASTICS

Biology courtesy faculty member and former graduate student Dr. Joseph Pfaller from the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research has published new evidence that sea turtles are attracted to plastics by their smell.  Prior to this study it was assumed that sea turtles mistake plastics floating in the ocean for prey by using visual […]

Ponciano Lab Publishes Study on Anthrax

An important advance in understanding the population dynamics of infectious disease was published by Biology Associate Professor José Miguel Ponciano in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   Using field collected data from Namibia on plains zebra and coalescence modeling, the study develops a new method for estimating the duration of anthrax infections and […]

Schnitzler and colleagues publish paper in Science demonstrating ancient, shared origin of germ cells between Cnidarians and humans.

Germ cells are the cells that create reproductive cells known as gametes (eggs and sperm) in animals. Somatic cells are all the cells not involved in reproduction, such as muscle cells, skin cells, or blood cells. In many animals, including flies, worms, and humans, the separation of germ cells from somatic cells is an irreversible, […]