LUQ Newsletter August 2008

LUQ Newsletter
August 2008

Matthew C. Larsen

Associate Director

Matthew has been appointed Associate Director for Water at the U.S. Geological Survey. Larsen has been Chief Scientist for Hydrology since 2005 and has been leader of the USGS National Research Program in hydrology. He was also Caribbean District Chief at the agency, where he supervised water resources programs and worked with partners in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. [See http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1965 ]

Nick Brokaw

IGERT Program at UPR

NSF has awarded the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras an IGERT grant (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program).  The grant provides $3,000,000 for 2008-2013 to support PhD students in the Program in Environmental Sciences at UPR-RP and working in the area of "Natural-Human Systems in the Urbanizing Tropics".  The proposal was largely written by Sheila Ward and Nick Brokaw.  PI of the grant is Rafael Rios, Director of the Program in Environmental Sciences, UPR-RP.

2009 Luquillo LTER Annual Meeting and Site Review
The 2009 Luquillo LTER Annual Meeting will be June 1 and 2.  The NSF Site Review of LUQ LTER will be June 4 and 5, 2009.

Alonso Ramirez

From the REU site program at El Verde Field Station

The Summer 2008 program in Tropical Ecology and Evolution was a success, students worked on a diversity of interesting projects in collaboration with their mentors.  Student, mentor, and project titles:

  • Matthew Nielsen and Paul Klawinski: The responses of Puerto Rican spider communities to disturbance in different forest types.
  • Daniel M. Dlugos and Chelse Prather: Abundance and behavior of a litter snail (Megalomastoma croceum) in Puerto Rico.
  • Maylen Pérez, Jorge Ortiz and Debora Figueroa: Analysis of dissolved organic carbon quality in two tropical Puerto Rican streams receiving sewage.
  • Ashley Recupito and Alonso Ramirez: The role of decomposer on leaf litter decomposition of native and exotic tree species in a tropical Puerto Rican stream.
  • Vilmarie Figueroa-Nieves and Alonso Ramirez: Do insects consume leaf litter in tropical stream in Puerto Rico?
  • Eric Botts and Denny Fernandez: Light environments and plant recruitment in subtropical wet forest community within different past land use history.
  • Elana Peach-Fine, Mentor: José J. Fumero-Cabán: Reproductive biology of Lepanthes selenitepala and Lepanthes rubripetala: Two endemic orchids of Puerto Rico.
  • Juan G. García Cancel, Mentor: Elvia J. Meléndez-Ackeman: Influence of moss thickness and stream current on the distribution of Lepanthes (Orchidaceae) on Quebrada Sonadora.
  • Maria Carr and James D. Ackerman: Orchid – phorophytic interactions: Exploring vegetative adaptation of tropical epiphytic orchids.

Deborah J Lodge

New Publications

Three new fungal publications are in-press and one just came out.

The paper by Lodge et al. on montane and cloud forest specialists in Xylaria used a meta-analysis to detect cloud forest specialist species, of which two occur in Puerto Rico. These cloud forest specialists could be at higher risk from climate change than species with broader ecological amplitude. The latter two in-press publications should be out around August 15 in the on-line journal.

Lodge, D.J. and C. Ovrebo. First Records of Hygrophoraceae from Panama Including Two New Species. Fungal Diversity, in press.

Lodge, D.J., T. Læssøe, M.C. Aime and T.W. Henkel. 2008. Montane and cloud forest specialists among neotropical Xylaria species. North American Fungi 3: in press. 

Baroni, T.J., S.A. Cantrell, O.P. Perdomo-Sánchez and D.J. Lodge. 2008. New species of Pouzarella (Entolomataceae, Agaricales) from the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. North American Fungi 3: in press.  

Baroni, T.J., N. Boscusis, D.L. Lindner and D.J. Lodge. 2008. A new species of Pleurocollybia (Tricholomataceae; Agaricales, Basidomycetes) from Belize. Mycotaxon 103: 353-363. 

Barbara & Mike Richardson

Cross-site collaborations: Saba, Dutch Antilles

Barbara and Mike Richardson have been invited to take part in the Saba Conservation Foundation's 'Sea and Learn' programme, an annual education event in October, aimed at making people aware of the value of their natural environment. There is a programme of talks for visitors and residents linked to field excursions and events for schools and youth groups such as the Sea Scouts.

The island is tiny, only three miles by two miles, with a 3000 ft extinct volcano with a summit of cloud forest, and secondary forest on the lower slopes. We hope, in January 2009, to carry out a comparative study of the bromeliad fauna and use it as part of a bio- geographical study of bromeliads in other Caribbean islands, Costa Rica and Brazil, in collaboration with Diane Srivastava UBC Canada.

New publications

Publication accepted for The American Naturalist:

Why are predators more sensitive to habitat size than their prey? Insights from bromeliad-insect food webs. DS Srivastava, MK Trzyinski, BA Richardson, B Gilbert.

Bill McDowell

OPUS Award

Bill McDowell just received an OPUS award from NSF to synthesize 25 years of data on the biogeochemistry of the Luquillo Mountains during his next sabbatical.

Compiled by Jody Potter (Jody.Potter@unh.edu), University of New Hamshire
Web-published by Eda C. Meléndez-Colom (emelendez@lternet.edu)
October 16, 2008