As the spring semester ends, one of our FSUCML students will be walking across the stage at graduation! Sean McCollum successfully defended his Master’s thesis, “Exploring the drivers of seagrass meadow organic carbon burial and storage using meta-analytic and laboratory approaches.”
On April 6th, FSU held an undergraduate research symposium, where our excellent Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) students featured and presented research from across the Marine Lab. They each showed a poster on the work they’ve been conducting this past year with faculty and graduate students. Congrats to everyone on a great job!
Current graduate student Aaron Ridall, FSU Dept of Biology undergraduate Emily Farrar, former FSU Dept of Biology undergraduate Morgan Dansby, and FSUCML faculty member Dr. Jeroen Ingels, recently published their work on the influence of wastewater treatment plants and water input sources on size, shape, and polymer distributions of microplastics in St. Andrew Bay, Florida, USA.
FSU alumna Nika Blank (MSc. 2021, adv. Dr. Brooke) recently published a paper on spatial variation in hard bottom coral communities of the coastal West Florida Shelf.
One of the FSUCML’s own is graduating this month! Dr. Josh Manning successfully defended his dissertation, “Investigating the foraging, social, and spatial ecology of Caribbean parrotfishes” thus completing his doctoral journey at FSU.
[ST. TERESA, FL] – The Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory and St. James Bay Golf Club successfully kicked off the inaugural Play for the Bay Benefit Golf Tournament on Friday, October 7th. Twenty sponsors and eighteen teams helped raise over $15K for FSUCML graduate students.
Spring has sprung and now summer is halfway gone! The FSUCML is proud to recognize our three spring and summer graduates – Dr. Ethan Cissell and Master’s students Blake Hamilton and Anthony Sogluizzo. These three students have become forever ingrained in the FSUCML and we all wish them nothing but the best as they move on to their next chapters. Just be sure to come back and visit!
Recent FSU graduate, Blake Hamilton (MSc), recently published his second paper from his Master's thesis concerning the use of river and estuarine energy sources by Apalachicola Bay sharks.
When Dr. Breithaupt joined the FSU Coastal & Marine Lab he was surprised to learn that there were mangroves in the area. Like many, he shared the perception that mangroves weren’t found north of Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Much of his previous research has explored the importance of carbon in mangrove ecosystems, particularly the soils. So, when Dr. Steinmuller* joined Dr. Breithaupt’s lab as a Postdoctoral Scholar in August of 2021, one of the first projects they tackled was the question of how mangrove replacement of local saltmarshes might affect soil carbon storage in the Apalachicola Bay region.
Last Thursday, there was a prescribed burn in the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) unit of the FSUCML’s North 70 property. Crawfordville based company, Attack-One Fire Management Services, Inc., lead the burn, with assistance from a Tall Timbers crew. The FSUCML wants to extend a huge thank you to everyone involved to make sure it was completed successfully and safely! For more information on prescribed burns and how they help encourage plant re-growth, read this article about our burn last year.