Center for Tropical Research June 2007 Newsletter

Feature Article

Conserving Evolutionary Process in the Sky Islands of Northern Mexico
by John McCormack, Graduate Student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, UCLA

Field Report

Host-parasite Coevolution in Neotropical Ants
by Shauna Price, Graduate Student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, UCLA

Updates

Field Research Trips

Africa (Cameroon and Ghana)

Tom Dietsch returned from a three and a half month research trip to Cameroon on May 1. The purpose of the research was to evaluate potential disease transmission pathways for H5N1 avian influenza in northern Cameroon. This research was made possible through support provided by the Office of Health, Infectious Disease and Nutrition, the Bureau for Global Health, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. While in Cameroon, Tom also advised graduate research by Casey Sanders from Technische Universität München in Freising, Germany, on the foraging ecology of birds in Cameroon’s cacao agroforests in collaboration with the Sustainable Tree Crops Program.

Kevin Njabo will travel to Cameroon for 12 weeks, beginning in June 2007, to conduct field research on the vectors for Plasmodium, the parasite responsible for human and avian malaria. As part of CTR’s National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, he will research which mosquito (vector) species are carriers of the parasites.

Henri Thomassen will travel to Cameroon for six weeks in June and July to study the impact of habitat fragmentation on breeding colony connectivity of the threatened Central African rockfowl (Picathartes oreas).

Ravinder Sehgal, Gediminas Valkiunas, and Tony Chasar will travel to Ghana for the month of July. Tom Smith, Tony Chasar, and Dennis Anye Ndeh will spend a month during August and September in Cameroon. They will be carrying out field research for CTR’s NSF grant on the effects of deforestation on blood-borne pathogens in African rainforest birds. They will be collecting blood samples from target species to groundtruth a remote sensing predictive model on the prevalence of disease

Latin America (Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela)

Ana Paula Giorgi will spend two months of the summer, from July 9 to September 9, doing fieldwork in Brazil for her Ph.D. project on the “Application of Remote Sensing and Ecological Niche Modeling: Approach in Restoration and Conservation of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.”

Jordan Karubian, CTR’s Latin America Director, traveled to Ecuador from May 20 to June 17 to conduct field research and consult with CTR’s research team on ongoing conservation, education, and research projects.

Jaime Chaves traveled to Venezuela for a month and a half in May and June to conduct research on speckled hummingbirds in the Cordillera de la Costa montane forests located on the northern coast of Venezuela. He will also conduct sampling in the Andes of Venezuela.

Erin Marnocha joined Professors Greg Grether, Peter Narins and 14 undergraduate students in Nicaragua for the UCLA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Field Biology Quarter (FBQ) from April 30 to May 19. Erin served as the teaching assistant for Professor Grether’s course on “Field Behavioral Ecology.”

North America (Mexico)

John McCormack spent three weeks in April with a research team in the Sierra del Carmen region of Mexico studying patterns of divergence in egg color in Mexican Jays along an elevational gradient.

Awards, Presentations, and Appointments

Jaime Chaves attended the VIII Neotropical Ornithological Congress in Maturín, Venezuela, May 13 to 19 where he gave an oral presentation on “The role of ecology and geography in shaping the phylogeography of the speckled hummingbird in Ecuador.” He also presented a poster entitled “Standing at the shoulder of giants: the role of the Andean uplift in hummingbird diversification,” at the 10th Annual Biology Research Symposium sponsored by the UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in May 2007. Jaime was awarded a Doctoral Research Grant in May 2007 from the UCLA Latin American Center.

Ana Paula Giorgi received a Tinker Field Research Grant from the UCLA Latin American Center to carry out her Ph.D. research in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil during the summer of 2007.

Jordan Karubian attended the VIII Neotropical Ornithological Congress in Maturín, Venezuela, May 13 to 19, 2007, where he gave three oral presentations based on his research with colleagues: 1) Lek dynamics and sexual selection in the long-wattled umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger, cotingidae), 2) Causes and consequences of non-random seed dispersal by the long-wattled umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger), and 3) Natural history and conservation of the banded ground-cuckoo (Neomorphus radiolosus).

John McCormack was awarded the 2007 Lasiewski Award in recognition of his outstanding research in Organismic Biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He received a Lida Scott Brown Fellowship for Summer 2007. In May 2007, he also received an Explorer’s Club Research Grant and the American Ornithologists’ Union Van Tyne Research Award. John gave an oral presentation at the VIII Neotropical Ornithological Congress in Maturín, Venezuela, held May 13 to 19, on “Genetic differentiation in the Mexican jay (Aphelocoma ultramarina): diversification in the Mexican highlands.” He recently had a first-author paper on Mexican jays accepted for publication in Behaviour. John will be leaving CTR in the fall to accept a postdoctoral position with Dr. Lacey Knowles at the University of Michigan.

Kevin Njabo will attend the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, from July 1 to 7. Kevin was awarded a $1,200 travel grant by the Society for Conservation Biology to present a paper on “The speciation and phylogeography of African hill babblers.” At the meeting, he will also give a presentation to the Young Women Conservation Biologists working group.

Shauna Price received a Tinker Field Research Grant from the UCLA Latin American Center to do research in Panama for a month in September to collect ant species for phylogeographic analysis.

Grants

UCLA Academic Senate 2007-2008 Council on Research (COR) Faculty Grants Program

Effects of Deforestation on Disease Prevalence in Neotropical Rain Forest Birds
Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy

Update of the Santa Monica Mountains Comprehensive Plan

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