Center for Tropical Research April 2007 Newsletter

Feature Article

Finding Endangered Tropical Dry Forest in the Pacific: A Case Study from Fiji
by Dr. Thomas W. Gillespie, Associate Professor of Geography, UCLA

Updates

Report on UCLA Institute of the Environment International Summit

The international summit on “Evolutionary Change in Human-altered Environments,” held at UCLA from February 8-10, was attended by 325 people from 21 countries. Sponsored by the UCLA Institute of the Environment, and co-organized by CTR Director Thomas Smith and Professor Louis Bernatchez, the summit brought together more than 50 prominent scientists and policy makers to discuss solutions to the many environmental problems we face. In addition, 104 people presented posters at the summit. Many graduate students and postdoctoral researchers attended this groundbreaking educational event.

The speakers’ abstracts and presentations can be viewed on the summit web site at under the link for “Speaker Presentations.” The abstracts and most of the talks can be accessed by clicking on one of the links next to the speaker’s name. Later this year, Blackwell Publishing will be publishing the proceedings in a special issue of the journal, Molecular Ecology. The publication date will be announced on the summit web site.

New Researchers Join CTR Team

Henri Thomassen, a new CTR postdoctoral scholar, was previously at Leiden University in The Netherlands. Henri is studying the role of sexual selection in allopatric speciation in honeyeaters, as well as working on mapping morphological and genetic patterns as part of CTR’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project on climate change and biodiversity.

Kevin Njabo, previously at Boston University, and originally from Cameroon, is also a new postdoctoral scholar at CTR. Kevin is working on the ecology and evolution of avian tropical diseases in Africa as part of CTR’s research team for a grant funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Emily Curd has joined the CTR team as a staff research associate. She is working on CTR’s avian influenza research project. She recently received her master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Ryan Harrigan, previously at Boston University, is a new CTR research associate. He is working on a project investigating the ecological changes in bird populations and how these changes affect infectious disease transmission.

Awards, Presentations, and Appointments

John McCormack received a grant from the Frank M. Chapman Memorial Fund of the American Museum of Natural History to study the speciational history of the New World jay genus Aphelocoma.

Erin Marnocha received an Ecology and Evolutionary Biology departmental conference travel award to present a talk entitled “Anthropogenic habitat alteration affects the strength and form of natural selection in the brown anole (Anolis sagrei)” at the Evolution 2007 meeting, the joint annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists to be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, in June 2007. She also received a travel award for the meeting from The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Allison Alvarado received a Lida Scott Brown Research Award in Fall 2006 for her study of patterns of evolutionary differentiation in the hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus) in British Columbia.

Ben Wang was awarded the Alwyn Gentry Award for Best Graduate Student Presentation at the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation meeting held in Kunming, China, in July 2006 for his presentation on “Repercussions of extirpating mammals: reduced seed removal and dispersal of the Afrotropical tree, Antrocaryon klaineanum (Anacardiaceae).”

Jaime Chaves was awarded the Most Outstanding Graduate Poster Presentation at the Ninth Annual Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Research Symposium, held at UCLA in June 2006, for his poster entitled “The role of geography and ecology in shaping the phylogeography of the speckled hummingbird (Adelomyia melanogenys) in Ecuador.”

Grants

Wildlife Conservation Society

Evaluating Potential Disease Transmission Pathways for H5N1 Avian Influenza by Domestic and Wildlife Bird Communites in Cameroon
Pomona Valley Audubon Society and Sea & Sage Audubon Society

Population of the Tricolored Blackbird in California: are northern and southern populations genetically distinct

Donors

CTR would like to thank Margery Nicolson for providing a second year of support for CTR graduate student Jaime Chaves. Jaime is a biologist from Ecuador who is studying the evolution of speckled hummingbirds in South America.

Check out our other newsletters at the CTR Newsletter Archive.