Biology

Biology assistant professor Hannah Vander Zanden has been named an Early-Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences.  The award recognizes emerging scientific leaders who share an interest in improving the well-being of coastal communities and ecosystems. Her research program will focus on gaps in our knowledge about sea […]

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 Dr. Clare Rittschof (Ph.D. 2011, supervised by Jane Brockmann) received the Outstanding New Investigator award from the Animal Behavior Society.  This award recognizes an outstanding contribution in animal behavior by a new investigator.  Clare is an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky (Department of Entomology) studying how experience and social interactions influence behavior.  Her […]

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Ryan St. Laurent (advised by Akito Kawahara) won the prestigious Harry K. Clench Award for the best student paper given at the joint meeting of the Lepidopterists’ Society and the Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica in Ottawa Canada.  Mark Sandfoss (advised by Harvey Lilywhite) won best talk in Ecology at the Ichthyologists and Herpetologists meeting in Rochester, […]

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The American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) selected recent Biology Ph.D. Rebecca Stubbs (Ph.D. 2018 co-advised by Nico Cellinese and Doug Soltis) as the 2018 recipient of the George R. Cooley Award, considered one of the most prestigious early-career honors offered in the field of plant sciences. This award is for the best contributed paper […]

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Professor and Chair Marta Wayne is the new president-elect of the Society for the Study of Molecular Biology and Evolution.  The SMBE is an international organization that promotes research and collaboration by molecular evolutionists.   Congratulations Marta!

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Assistant Professor Emily Sessa has been awarded a 3-year National Science Foundation grant to support her research on ferns, Understanding the effects of ploidal level on responses to global change in plants.  This research will examine how genome duplication (polyploidy) influences the responses of plants to changes in temperature and drought conditions. The research is […]

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Jay McEntee, a post-doctoral fellow in Gordon Burleigh’s lab, published an important new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The paper, “Tempo and timing of ecological trait divergence in bird speciation,” examines the relationship between the rate of evolutionary change (whether pulsed or gradual) and the formation of new species. They found that evolutionary change […]

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Biology Professor Betty Smocovitis is leading one of the four interdisciplinary groups that will conduct Research into Teaching sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and organized by the UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere.  The group will study how lessons from past inventions can inform current problems stemming from the accelerating […]

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We hope you enjoy the first digital issue of SYMBIOSIS, the Biology newsletter for Spring/Summer 2018. We’ve had a busy spring semester in the Department of Biology! As most of you know, UF achieved Top 10 status among public research universities this year, and President Fuchs and the Board of Trustees have committed to hiring […]

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Keon Wimberly, a graduate student in Keith Choe’s lab, has been awarded a Porter Physiology Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from the American Physiological Society.  This national fellowship program awards only eight fellowships annually for study leading to a Ph.D. in physiological sciences at a US institution.   Congratulations Keon!

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Congratulations to Aaron Sandoval, a biology major student who has been awarded a Goldwater Scholarship for the 2018-2019 academic year. Mr. Aaron Sandoval, a member of the UF Honors program has been conducting research at the Cancer and Genetics Institute under the mentorship of Dr. Malcom Maden.  His research focuses on using the African spiny […]

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“Paradise in the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities” PROFESSOR WILLIAM MARTIN Evolutionary Biologist and Professor at the Institute of Molecular Evolution, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Talk and Panel Discussion “Life out of Paradise: Where Did We Ultimately Come From, and Why Do We Want to Know?” Monday, April 2, 5 – 6:30 p.m. Ustler […]

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Biology Postdoc Tao Zhang and Assistant Professor Jeremy Lichstein published a major paper in Nature on the response of forests to climate change. They examine changes in forest biomass using systematic forest inventories from the 1980s and 2000s across the eastern US, a period in which some regions became drier while others became wetter. They […]

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Associate Professor of Biology and Curator Akito Kawahara and his colleagues have published the first comprehensive evolutionary tree of butterflies.  The team analyzed 352 genetic markers from 207 butterfly species representing all butterfly families and subfamilies and 98 percent of all butterfly tribes. The tree was also dated by calibrating it with the fossil record. […]

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Biology’s outstanding teacher scholars were recognized by three nominations for the CLAS Teacher of the Year competition. Drs. Brad Barbazuk, Keith Choe, and Christine Davis were all nominated, which in itself is a singular honor. Among this stiff competition (which also included excellent teachers from many other departments in CLAS), Dr. Davis was awarded a 2017-2018 […]

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Dan Paluh recently won the David and Marvalee Wake Award for Best Student Talk in the Division of Phylogenetic and Comparative Biology at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology, which took place January 3 to 7, 2018 in San Francisco.  Dan, we’re proud of you!

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Dr. James Liao, Associate Professor of Biology and UF Term Professor, has published an important new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  In collaboration with past post-doctoral students, colleagues and undergraduates in the REU program at the Whitney Marine Lab., Liao uses biomechanics, fluid dynamics and biomimetic models to study fish […]

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Dr. David Oppenheimer’s video on protein movement has won a national BioArt Award from FASEB, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Dr. Oppenheimer’s video shows how, although protein structures are often shown as static images, in real life they twist and wiggle. Proteins and all other biological molecules are formed of individual atoms […]

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 Biology Professor Rebecca Kimball published a new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution.  The study describes changes in the size of snail kites resulting from a recent change in their specialized diet.  Graduate student Christopher E. Cattau teamed up with faculty from the Departments of Biology, Wildlife Ecology, Entomology and the USGS Cooperative Fish and […]

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Dr. Gabriela Blohm (Ph.D. 2017, supervised by José Miguel Ponciano) was recognized by the Venezuelan National Academy of Medicine for her work on Zika virus.  The prize is given each year by the José Gregorio Hernandez Foundation, which was founded in 1968 to honor the legacy of Dr. Hernandez, a Venezuelan physician who advocated for the […]

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