We also recently obtained an NSF-IGERT grant that trains students from
Biology, Geography, Mathematics, and Statistics to tackle spatial problems in
ecology. You should check out the program at our
website.
What you should do if you're interested in working with me....Please read some of my publications (I suggest that you look at Osenberg et al. 1992 (Ecology), Osenberg et al. 1999 (Ecology), Osenberg et al. 2002 (Ecology Letters), Vonesh and Osenberg 2003 (Ecology Letters), Shima and Osenberg 2003 (Ecology), Huckins et al. 2000 (Ecological Applications), Hauxwell et al. 2003 (Ecological Applications), and Osenberg et al. 2006 (Foundations of Restoration Ecology) to get a sense of the types of questions I ask, my philosophy, and the approaches that I take. Although most of my recent work is in coral reef systems, I'm particularly keen to recruit new students who are interested in freshwater systems.
If you are still interested in joining my lab, please think about the type of research questions that drive you and the type of graduate program that you'd like to be a part of. Please contact me (preferably via e-mail) and let me know: 1) what types of research questions you are interested in (be specific; tell me what drives you to do science; what "makes your toes curl"); 2) what experiences have prepared you for graduate school (who you've conducted research with, what you've done, resultant publications, etc.); and (although I hate asking this) 3) what your GPA and GRE are (I use this as a crude way to see "flags" -- the university also has certain minimum requirements, so it's best that we deal with these issues up front).
Other folks in my lab.... I currently have four graduate students working on their Ph.D.s at UF (Adrian Stier, Jess Beasley, Carol Chaffee, and Mike Gil -- I co-advise Jess with Tom Frazer in the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences; and I co-advise Carol with Ed Braun in Biology). Adrian, Carol and Mike do some of their research in Mo'orea, French Polynesia. Adrien is interested in population dynamics of reef fish (including apparent competition, priority effects, predator aggregation and density-dependence). Carol is interested in coral-microbe assemblages and the effects of stressors on those relationships. Mike joined the lab in 2009, but is probably going to pursue effects of stressors on coral and seagrass habitats. Jess brings a blend of engineering and biological interests and is looking the interaction of flow and consumer-resource interactions in coastal springs.
My past students include Gabriela Blohm (MS; coadvised with Bob Holt), Mike McCoy (PhD), Becca Hale (MS and PhD; co-advised with Colette St. Mary), Jacqueline Wilson (MS and PhD), James Vonesh (PhD) and Ben Miner (PhD). Gaby's work focused on sea grass and Spartina systems and the responses of those plants (and their diseases) to temperature, grazers, and nutrients. She's now a PhD student at UF with Marta Wayne. Becca worked on parental care and the effects of oxygen in flagfishes, did a post-doc Florida State University with Joe Travis, and is now on faculty at UNC Asheville. She integrates experiments and models to look at the interplay between natural and sexual selection, especially in the evolution of parental care and other reproductive behaviors. Mike worked on phenotypic plasticity (as have several of my students), particularly in how organisms respond to multiple factors that each lead to the development of different (and potentially conflicting) phenotypes and how these trade-offs scale up to the population and community level. Mike worked with amphibians and took a very strong quantitative and experimental approach (e.g., McCoy et al. 2006, Oecologia). Mike has done post-docs with Jamie Gillooly (UF), Karen Warkentin (Boston U), James Vonesh (VCU) and Jason Rohr (USF). Jackie worked on settlement and post-settlement processes in coral reef fishes (in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands), and explored a phenomenon she discovered that we call "cryptic density-dependence" (e.g., Wilson & Osenberg 2002, Oecologia; Shima and Osenberg 2003, Ecology). Jackie had a Knauss Fellowship in Washington DC after her PhD and is now employed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. James' research focused on multi-predator effects in stage-structured populations -- he worked on amphibians in Tanzania (e.g., Vonesh & Osenberg 2003, Ecology Letters; Vonesh and Bolker 2005, Ecology). He also did some very important work that scaled up UV-mediated egg mortality to its population-level implications (Vonesh and de la Cruz 2002, Oecologia). James went on to post-docs at Boston University (working at the Smithsonian in Panama) and Washington University. He is on faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University. Ben worked on the phenotypic plasticity in echinoderm larvae, with a particular interest in how temporal variation in the environment influences the development of traits and how morphology feeds back to influence larval and juvenile performance (e.g., Miner and Vonesh 2004, Ecology Letters). Ben obtained an NSF grant to continue his work on phenotypic plasticity (in intertidal systems) at the Bodege Marine Laboratory (UC Davis) as a post-doc and is now on faculty at Western Washington University.
I also have had a group of post-docs and visitors in my lab since I've been at UF. Jennifer Hauxwell worked on the dynamics of Vallisneria, and is now with the Wisconsin DNR. Laurent Vigliola works on coral reef fishes in the Florida Keys, and went on to become a staff scientist with the New Caledonia and French governments. Other previous post-docs include Casey Huckins (now on faculty at Michigan Tech.) and Ace Sarnelle (now on faculty at Michigan State University, and who was supported at NCEAS as a post-doctoral fellow in association with a working group on meta-analysis that I directed). Jackie Wilson's post-doctoral fellowship at NMFS was through my lab, and I hosted Joachim Claudet as part of the "EMPAFISH" project studying effects of MPAs in the Mediterranean.
My philosophy.... I expect my students to value critical interaction and to seek out a diversity of scientific input. I did not get into science to work in isolation, and I expect my students to share a spirit for interaction (e.g., over beers or a cup of coffee, and certainly at a blackboard). I expect students to attend the departmental seminar as well as other seminars and reading groups. I don't care about grades (they are irrelevant, although there will be some important courses you'll need to take) -- instead I value your growth as a scientist and colleague. I challenge my students to combine field, lab, observational, experimental, and mathematical approaches. The combination is far more powerful than any one alone.
Perhaps the best way to judge my approach is to check out my favorite
quotes (the first is the best):
"Politeness is the poison of all good collaboration in science. The soul of collaboration is perfect candor, rudeness if need be. Its prerequisite is parity of standing in science, for if one figure is too much senior to the other, that's when the serpent politeness creeps in. A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship."Funding.... My students are supported by my research grants, their own grants/fellowships, and by departmental TAships. I typically have one (sometimes two) student(s) per term appointed as an RA. Three of my students held EPA STAR Fellowships, one received an NSF Doctoral Fellowship, two received NSF Dissertation Improvement Grants, and all have received a variety of smaller grants (<$6,000) from a diversity of sources. Overall, they have succeeded in attracting ~$500,000 in research funds and fellowships. I expect students to attempt to procure their own funding (grant writing is an important part of their training), based on the development of questions that are "independent" of my own -- I never "hand" a student a project, although I expect that their questions will be similar to my own (or else they wouldn't be working in my lab). In some cases, the students may work on the same system as I do. But in these cases, they still need to develop a research project in which they can independently develop their ideas (with support, but not too much interference, from me). I enjoy interacting and working with my students, and will offer them whatever help that I can (financial and intellectual), but my primary goal is to help them develop into, and succeed as, independent, creative scientists.
--Francis Crick in a BBC interview"There are no applied sciences...there are only applications of science and this is a very different matter ... The application of science is very easy to anyone who is the master of the theory of it."
--Louis Pasteur (1871) Revise Scientifique"Philosophy is written in this great book of the Universe which is continually open before our eyes but we cannot read it without having first learnt the language and the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics and the characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical shapes without the means of which it is humanly impossible to decipher a single word; without which we are wandering in vain through a dark labyrinth."
--Galileo"Quirks of natural history will defeat any general theory."
--Chris Harley (sitting on the lawn at the 2000 ESA meeting)And a final one with a political tone (in reference to the infamous year 2000). In 1555, Nostradamus (apparently) wrote:
Come the millennium, month 12,
In the home of greatest power,
The village idiot will come forth
To be acclaimed the leader.
We also recently obtained an NSF-IGERT grant that trains students from
Biology, Geography, Mathematics, and Statistics to tackle spatial problems in
ecology. You should check out the program at our
website.
If you are
interested in natural resource issues, you also should check out the program in
the School of Natural Resources and the Environment (SNRE),
of which I am a member.
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Last updated by CWO: 04 September 2009