Eckerd alumni and faculty help future scientists through study of Gulf of Mexico’s past ecosystem
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill precipitated a wave of science trying to understand the impacts of the event on the ecosystem, including the need to find out what existed before, said Patrick Schwing ’06, Ph.D., a visiting assistant professor of marine science at Eckerd College. With support from the Center for the Integrated Modeling and Analysis of the Gulf Ecosystem (C-IMAGE), a scientific collaborative of 17 institutions that have published 250 papers on the spill’s impacts, Bryan O’Malley ’13, a graduate student and lab technician at the University of South Florida worked with colleagues over five years to try to determine the past quality of the marine ecosystems with the help of some single-celled organisms.
O’Malley’s work—“Development of a benthic foraminifera based marine biotic index (Foram-AMBI) for the Gulf of Mexico: A decision support tool,” co-authored by Schwing, Professor of Marine Science and Geosciences Gregg Brooks, and Marine Science Research Assistant Rebekka Larson ’01—will be published in the January 2021 issue of Ecological Indicators.
Save The Planet…and Plants
In a study published in August in Conservation Biology, Dr. Frances and 15 other researchers from across the United States quantified how many trees, shrubs, herbs and flowering plants have vanished from North America since European settlement. After compiling existing information on presumed extinct species and working with local botanists to vet the data, the group narrowed down a list of 65 plant species, subspecies and varieties that have been lost forever in the wild. And that’s probably an underestimate.
Florida is no exception to plants nearing extinction. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services keeps a list of these species, which include natives like the ghost orchid, pitcher plant, and wild columbine. In the Everglades, endangered flora include the buccaneer palm, Florida thatch palm, manchineel, King’s holly and others. You can help protect threatened and endangered species by being a responsible gardener.