Getty successfully defended her MS thesis today! She gave an awesome talk exploring how multiple disturbance drivers impact plant understories in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta!

Emily successfully defended her MS thesis today! It was an awesome defense and a great victory lap to cap off an amazing MS thesis project!!

A bittersweet final sampling for Getty to finish up her MS thesis.  We collected plant community composition and soil cores from 48 plot pairs that either were disturbed or not disturbed last year at this time.  We have been monitoring plant community recovery after this disturbance in our delta plots at Port Jacinto.  It was a fun and wet day!

Emily, Darrien, & Chelsea all presented their research at the South Alabama Graduate Research Symposium today. Great job all!!  Darrien presented work on introductory biology instructor usage and perceived benefits of ideaological awareness in the biology classroom; Emily presented work exploring the benefits of mycorrhizal fungi to salinity & drought tolerance in coastal grasses; and Chelsea presented work on how ghost crab burrowing density and size is impacted by mechanical disturbance and nutrient addition.  Getty was supposed to present work on delta plant community response to disturbance however was knocked out by covid.

Super excited that lab undergrad Emily Parrish will be spending her summer at Florida International University as part of their REU program!  Woohoo!!!

J was interviewed for Inverse Magazine this week to discuss the cool new findings of a Nature Ecology & Evolution study that calls into question the over interpretation and misinformation surrounding the common mycorrhizal network. 

Getty, Emily, Jeremiah, and former UG Kaitlyn were presenting talks and posters at the Bays & Bayous symposium in Mobile this week.  It was a great way to showcase some of the awesome work in coastal dunes, deltas, and freshwater streams occurring within the group! It was our first time at this symposium, what a fun conference bringing together scientists, governmental agencies, non-profits, and stakeholders to talk about pressing issues in the northern gulf coast.

Getty was awarded the 2022-2023 Blanche E Dean Scholarship from the Alabama Wildflower Society for her work to understand the seed bank within the Mobile-Tensaw Delta following disturbance!  Congrats Getty!

Undergraduate researcher Sarah Shelton was accepted into PA school here at the University of South Alabama!  Sarah will be starting up in the program in May of 2023. Congrats Sarah!!!!

Getty & Emily were out this week conducting winter plant surveys and collecting soil cores from our Delta Disturbance experiment at Jacinto Port