Graduate Student Research Forum

The Ecology & Evolution Research Discussion Group (EERDG; pronounced "urge") provides a forum at which graduate students can present research in various stages of conception or completion. The EERDG website includes a schedule and other information about graduate students and their research here in the E&E group at FSU.

Overview of the Graduate Program


The faculty in the Ecology and Evolution Group at Florida State University are strongly committed to the graduate program. We realize that the reciprocity between faculty and graduate students is very important: maintaining a dynamic and intellectually aggressive group of graduate students will improve the quality and enjoyment of our entire program. To this end, we help our graduate students to become creative, yet critical, scientists while maintaining a collegial and rewarding atmosphere.

Admission

Our program has no strict admission criteria, but we expect most applicants to have a strong background in biology or a related discipline, including some background in chemistry, calculus, and statistics. Deficiencies in these areas can be addressed by coursework at Florida State University. The program is primarily directed toward Ph.D. students and students who ultimately wish to obtain a Ph.D., but we provide complete guidance for students working towards master's degrees as well. We encourage prospective students to contact individual faculty in the program directly to explore mutual interests in research training opportunities. Interested students must complete the departmental and university applications and must have taken the Graduate Record Exam. Generally, students are selected from a competitive applicant pool each spring for fall-semester admission. After acceptance, we expect all students to be full-time in our program; all students are supported for the duration of their studies with full stipends (generally teaching or research assistantships) and tuition waivers.

Guidance and Course Work

Each student is accepted with a provisional major advisor but may switch advisors during the program. An advisory committee is generally formed in the second semester and consists of two (M.S.) or four (Ph.D.) additional faculty. Where appropriate, faculty from other institutions may be included on advisory committees. The major professor and the committee consult with the student on coursework and research opportunities, as well as evaluating the student annually.

A variety of graduate courses are offered, both in Biological Science and in related departments such as Statistics, Scientific Computing, and Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science. The program of studies for each student is unique and is determined through consultation between the student and the advisory committee, but a core group of courses is required. These courses, which take students through their first three semesters, include Advanced Field Biology, Experimental Design and Analyses, Advanced Population Biology, and Advanced Evolutionary Biology. Other courses include Community Ecology, Models in Ecology and Evolution, a "Mock NSF Panel" course on grants and grant writing, Marine Ecology, and a large and ever-changing variety of seminar/reading courses. A detailed description of the graduate requirements can be found on the departmental web pages.

Research Opportunities

Although north Florida provides some wonderful research areas, graduate students in Ecology and Evolution have worked literally all over the world. We encourage our students to explore the natural environments around Tallahassee, while also working with a variety of scientists at FSU to develop a broad base of knowledge and skills. Below are some examples of current graduate research.

Examples of Current Graduate Student Research

Amanda Buchanan

I study interactions among flowering plants, insect herbivores, and insect pollinators. A plant must simultaneously repel herbivores and attract pollinators, and may therefore be constrained by the ecological costs of a trait like floral display size or chemical defenses. My research uses a clonal, perennial host plant (Chamerion angustifolium, fireweed) to explore the effects of herbivore damage and pollination on plant growth and reproduction (for example, how high levels of herbivory affect flower production), and plant-mediated indirect interactions between herbivores and pollinators (for example, how herbivore-induced changes in flower production affect pollinator foraging).

I conduct summer field research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado. Chamerion is abundant throughout much of the Rocky Mountains, growing quickly after disturbances such as fire or avalanche, and it hosts a suite of herbivores and bumblebee pollinators. I conduct additional winter research in greenhouses at Florida State University, manipulating plant reproductive patterns and measuring responses to pollination and simulated herbivore damage.

Janna Fierst

Mutation is the ultimate origin of biological variation, but processes at three levels determine the evolution of the genetic system. First, patterns of mutations determine the input of variation, second, patterns of genetic interactions determine how mutations are expressed through the genotype-phenotype map and third, patterns of selection act on the phenotype and induce genetic changes. My research uses a combination of mathematical models and computer simulations to explore these dynamics, particularly patterns of genetic interactions. Currently, my main projects are using a theoretical model and individual-based simulations to explore the effects of directionality and magnitude of epistatic interactions on reproductive isolation, and combining a simplified analytical representation of a genetic regulatory network and computer simulations to study the evolution of networks producing sexually dimorphic characters.

FSU is a terrific place to study theoretical and computational biology as we have great computational resources, classes that allow you to learn programming and mathematical modeling from the bottom up, and faculty members using computational and mathematical methods to study biological problems in several different departments. Our department is supportive and interactive, and the faculty put a lot of effort into really training students. I’ve been encouraged to think broadly and work on a wide range of scientific questions, and during my PhD I’ve had several international research opportunities including the Santa Fe Institute’s Complex Systems Summer School in Beijing and funding from the Norwegian Research Council to study at the University of Oslo.

Nathaniel Jue

Nathaniel Jue is a graduate student here at Florida State whose interests are focused on crossroads between ecology, evolution, conservation and applied science. A senior member of the Dr. Joseph Travis’s lab, Nathaniel has focused his research on the role of dispersal in both the ecology and evolution of the grouperfish gag, Mycteroperca microlepis. During his time in the department, he has worked in close collaboration with Drs. Felicia Coleman and Chris Koenig at the Florida State University Marine Laboratory at Turkey Point on research projects related to describing the role of spatial and temporal processes on the population genetics and dynamics of gag. In the course of his dissertation work, Nathaniel has used both genetic and chemical markers to explore dispersal processes across the different life stages of gag and spatial/temporal scales in order to assess the patterns of these movement events and their relationship to both life history and spatial ecology of the species. His research spans various ecological and evolutionary time-scales in the attempt to provide information, not only relevant to our understanding of marine species and ecosystems, but important in advancing our understanding and management of an economically important resource, here, in the southeastern United States. Throughout his dissertation, Nathaniel has received assistance from a variety of funding sources in order to complete his work, including support from NOAA, the EPA (EPA STAR Fellowship), the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, In-house Departmental and University grants and fellowships, and private organizations such as PADI and the Walt Disney Company. In the future, Nathaniel hopes continue conducting research that is useful in the fields of both basic and applied research.

Katie McGhee

While the members of an animal species share a behavioral repertoire, all individuals are not identical in their expression of behaviors. The repeatable patterns of behavioral expression in an individual and the diversity of those so-called behavioral phenotypes or personalities can make sexual selection an intricate process with multiple direct and indirect effects. While sexual selection on individual behavioral traits has been well-described, sexual selection on behavioral phenotypes is less well-understood. This is particularly true when individual interactions in social groupings determine who mates with whom and how often. In these cases, the expression of female mating preferences and competitive behaviors among males will depend upon which behavioral phenotypes are interacting and the outcome of sexual selection will depend on the distribution of behavioral phenotypes in the population and the frequencies of particular interactions.

My dissertation examines how the diversity of behavioral phenotypes and their interactions create gradients of sexual selection and whether there is a genetic foundation for that diversity using a local freshwater fish, the bluefin killifish (Lucania goodei). Specifically, my dissertation will investigate (1) how behavioral variation in traits within and among contexts are correlated and contribute to the behavioral phenotype, (2) how these behavioral phenotypes arise (early environment vs. genetics), (3) how behavioral phenotypes affect mating success under different social conditions, and (4) whether females receive any indirect, genetic benefits from mating with different male behavioral phenotypes and whether these benefits are dependent on the social context.