From left to right: Dr. Mark Bush, MSc Bianca Gomes, BA Lina Cabrera Sáez, Dr. Crystal McMichael, Dr. Ansis Blaus, MSc Julián Beltrán and Msc Jessica Watson

Faculty

Mark B. Bush

I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Hull, UK, in 1986. After spending time at The Ohio State University, The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and Duke University, I joined the faculty of Florida Tech, where I am a Professor. I have more than 30 years experience of working on the biogeography and paleoecology of tropical systems and every time I visit I learn something new about these wonderful settings. One of the most exciting things about these trips is to introduce undergraduates and graduate students to tropical biodiversity - for many this is a life-altering experience! By analyzing sediments from ancient lakes we gain insights into the history of landscapes and are able to reconstruct past ecosystems. My research focuses on the effects of past and present climate change on human and natural systems, some of our recent research topics include looking for the cause of the die-off of large mammals at the end of the last ice age, evaluating the ecological impacts of pre-Columbian occupants of Amazonia and the Andes, trying to establish the history of El Niño events, and determining if previous interglacials in the Andes offer lessons for life under ongoing climate change. From these understandings we contribute to developing conservation strategies and in educating local communities about their history. My research group is keen to offer meaningful research opportunities to undergraduates. Undergraduates entering my laboratory are paired with graduate student mentors, and together we have a great track record of mentorship leading to our undergraduate workers presenting poster at scientific meetings and joining us as co-authors as we publish research findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals – both of which are great resume builders. I have published >200 papers on tropical ecology and climate change, and 2 books.

email: mbush@fit.edu

Post-Docs

Ansis Blaus

Ansis Blaus is a postdoctoral research associate in the Paleoecology lab in Florida Tech. He holds a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. His Ph.D. research was on modern pollen-plant relationships and palaeoecological reconstructions of peatlands and calcareous spring fens with an emphasis on biodiversity and plant functional trait reconstructions

Currently at Florida Tech, Ansis works on pollen data and other proxies from the sediment cores collected from the Amazon Basin. He investigates the tropical forest changes in relation to the global climate from a historical perspective, particularly during the warm periods of the Last Interglacial, about 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, and during the Holocene Climate Optimum roughly 9,000 to 5,000 years ago. His work will shed the light on the history of dynamics and climate tipping points in the Amazonian rainforest. This research is particularly important in the face of the current global climate crisis and could help to anticipate the tropical forest response to the changing climate in the future. Another objective of Ansis’s work is to study the pollen signature of human disturbance in the Amazon Basin as a means to model and interpret human presence and activities in the past and to understand human-nature interactions in tropical forest ecosystems in different spatial and temporal scales.

Interest in paleoecology, biodiversity, and various natural processes for Ansis derives from the concern that humans have altered tropical forests and most other ecosystems in the world to the level of the negative rebound effect. Ansis believes that to stop it we must study and understand these ecosystems from different perspectives to predict future scenarios and to develop conservation strategies for both nature and human well-being.

email: ablaus@fit.edu

 

Ph.D. Students 

Jessica Watson

Hello! My name is Jess and I was raised in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. During this period, I was involved with studying the impacts of restored prairies on small mammal communities in northwestern Minnesota. From there, I moved to Stephenville, Texas where I attended Tarleton State University and received my Master of Science degree. My thesis work, under the supervision of Dr. Jesse Meik, investigated geographic variation in morphology in the Mohave rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus).

I started my PhD with Dr. Bush in the fall of 2021. My research investigates how palm abundances have changed through time across latitudinal and precipitation gradients, as well as the impact of humans. Palms have been and are heavily utilized by indigenous populations for food and construction. I use phytoliths, microscopic silica particles found in many plants, as
a proxy for changes in vegetation over time. Phytoliths preserve well in the soil and taxa that are heavily used by humans, such as Poaceae (grasses) and Arecaceae (palms), produce an abundance of phytoliths. My sites are in two areas of South America separated by the Andes: the Chocó and western Amazonia. The Chocó bioregion is one of the rainiest places on earth and understudied
compared to other tropical regions. This is the first study that we are aware of examining the phytolith record in this region. We have a series of soil cores collected across the Ecuadorian Chocó. In western Amazonia, I have samples from near Iquitos, Cocha Cashu, and Tambopata.

email: watson2021@my.fit.edu

Lina Cabrera Sáenz

Hey! This is Lina, I was born in the city of Granada- Nicaragua. I obtained my undergraduate degree at  the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), and It was during my undergraduate studies that my fascination with plants bloomed, which has since become the primary focus of my research. My undergraduate dissertation marked a significant point in my academic journey. Collaborating with international researchers and the University of Oxford, I embarked on the pioneering quest to create Nicaragua's first palynological reference. This project resulted in the development of the first Pollen Atlas for plants belonging to the Dry Tropical Forest from the Central and Pacific regions of Nicaragua. Furthermore, I engaged with local communities, delving into their deep-seated connection with nature and their invaluable knowledge of local plant uses. I also worked as a Botany Specialist in various Environmental Impact Assessments for diverse projects spanning Nicaragua's Pacific and Atlantic regions. 

I joined Florida Tech in 2022 to begin my PhD. In Biological Sciences. Having dedicated most of my time to studying the flora of the Dry Tropical Forest, now I eagerly embrace the exciting opportunity to explore the lush Rainforests of the Amazon. This new opportunity presents an exhilarating challenge as I immerse myself in getting to know the astonishing and diverse flora of this region. My research at Florida Tech is focused on determining how land use patterns, such as the timing, duration, and frequency of human occupation, have resulted in ecological changes in Western Amazonia during the last 2000 years. I hope to unravel the region's land use history by contrasting paleoecological proxies with historical narratives of human occupation, such as those from the well-known Francisco de Orellana expedition and other early European explorers, as well as other important periods of Amazon occupation history, such as the Jesuit years and the Rubber boom.

My aspiration is for my work to enrich our comprehension of Amazon rainforest habitation and land use patterns while contributing to the historical narrative of my study area. I hold a particular interest for indigenous communities, whose livelihoods hinge upon the preservation of historical narratives centred around Amazonian indigenous populations and their enduring bond with the ecosystem across time. Moreover, I am eager to explore the interplay between human- environment, and how this intricate relationship may have shaped the current distribution of valuable plant species in Amazonia. 

email: lcabrera2022@my.fit.edu

Julian Beltran

Born and raised in the high elevations of the northern Andes with maize, potatoes, avocado, quinoa, and cacao. I’m from Bogota (Colombia), I love plants and during my life, my work has been related mainly to them. My first approach was working with the botany, ecology, and taxonomy of monocots and vascular epiphytes. After that I worked in physiology, quantifying the stress responses of timber and other species of human interest. In the middle of my undergrad, I discovered paleoecology and I found in it a very exciting research area that links botany, ecology, history, biogeography, geology, etc. This makes me want to know how our systems change through time, so I started looking for pollen from the mountains of my country.

The next step was during my Master of Science where I looked up for the vegetation changes in a Colombian Caribbean Sea-swamp during the last seven thousand years using pollen and sediment approaches (Cienaga de La Caimanera): at a glance, the results showed how the Caribbean sea enter into the lagoon and changes the dominant vegetation from a freshwater/forest land type to a marine mangrove environment. In the meanwhile, I kept abreast with the plants of the natural regions of my country mainly working as a professional botanist and doing plot-based floristic assessments in pristine and disturbed forest/areas. Then and during my last job before coming to the States I worked in restoration and monitoring of mangrove forest.

My interests are related to the ecology of the forest, the phytogeography, and the history and evolution of the Plantae in South America. There’s are questions that have always thrilled me: Why the Andes and Amazon are megadiverse? , what are the relationships between these two regions? , and also what the paper of we as humans in the development of the floras of these places ?. The stated and accepted relationship between plants-humans is also one of my interests, for example, the use of domestic and valuable plants in the Amazonia and how this relationship could have led to the current distribution of some species in the area (Mauritia flexuosa, Oenocarpus bataua,  Bactris gasipaes, etc).

My Ph. D. project addresses the question on how was the development of the tropical forest of South America during the Holocene in areas with different values of mean annual precipitation in the present-day, also is focused on the behavior of the plants in moments drier than the present (Mid-Holocene Dry Event) using diverse approaches. All of this is linked to the drier and hotter conditions projected to the next century. In the same way, I am working with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to learn more about the ecology of the forest in current times and looking for the application of this tool in paleoecology. 

email: jbeltran2021@my.fit.edu

Bianca Gomes

Brazilian, born and raised in the city of São Paulo (São Paulo - Brazil).

I did my undergrad in biology and my undergraduate research project was studying pollen rain collected with artificial pollen traps in the South of Brazil in Atlantic Forest remains.
After graduation, I moved to the Brazilian Amazon to pursue my Master's in botany at the National Institute of Amazonian Research (Manaus, Amazonas – Brazil). During my Master's, I studied the palynology from the Solimões Formation (Neogene, Brazil), and also of Holocene sediments from Amazonian flooded areas. Comparing the pollen diversity of Neogene with the Holocene we found that both palynofloras had pollen that originated mainly from local flooded environments and that Neogene palynoflora was much more homogeneous than modern sediments.
I arrived in the USA in 2022 to pursue my Ph.D. in Biology under Dr. Mark Bush and Crystal McMichael's guidance at Florida Institute of Technology. My research will aim to use the study of the palynology of sediment cores collected in Central and Northwestern Amazon to understand human impacts in the rainforest in the last ~2000 years.

email: bgomes2022@my.fit.edu