Getting ready to participate in the PACE Workshop: Linking Paleoecology and Community Ecology! This is an NSF-funded workshop, led by Jacquelyn Gill and Brian McGill from the University of Maine, and Jack Williams from the University of Wisconsin. This workshop brings together paleoecologists and…

Now that Juliana’s experiment is finished (for now, a second one is coming), lab work starts. There are several analyses that Juliana needs to run on her samples to be able to understand how light availability affects food webs and energy pathways.…

We just started another exciting field season, this time in Brazil. Juliana S. Leal (PhD student at UFRJ), co-advised by Vinicius Farjalla and Angélica L. González, is taking down her five month-long big experiment, and we are here to help her!…

This week, about 40 researchers from several places of the world met in Paraty, Brazil to discuss the ecology of bromeliad ecosystems. We had intense and productive days of talks and discussions about topics that range from the critical maximum temperatures…

I just came back from an exciting trip to the Atacama desert where I worked with a group of paleoecologists led by Dr. Claudio Latorre to collecting fossil rodent middens. Dr. Latorre and I are starting to investigate changes in the soil…

The last month has been filled with many new experiences and fun times. The five of us started out in Crucita which is in the dry coastal region of Ecuador. We began sampling in Portoviejo, an area not too far…

One of the things that I enjoy the most while doing field work in the jungle is to do field work at night. Spiders and many other creatures become more active at night time, therefore to understand patterns of spider…

Field work in the jungle is a very intense experience; this is a hostile work environment, which in part you could fight by using one of these creative tennis rackets that deliver an electric shock to kill flying insects (in here…

While part of the local team was sorting the research permits at the Ministery, picking up some extra malaise traps (flying insect traps) at the university, checking on the field vehicle that is getting fixed, etc. some of us took advantage of…

This is part of the crew that did a great job scouting for study sites in West Ecuador (from left to right: Luis (soon starting his PhD at UBC in the Avilés lab), Jen (Postdoc in the Avilés lab), Mark (Master…