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In the end we will conserve only what we love;
we will love only what we understand;
and we will understand only what we have been taught.
-Baba Dioum, 1968
As noted by Dioum, positive conservation results can only be expected from a better understanding of the factors affecting the loss of biological diversity, and ultimately disseminating this knowledge. This is a unifying thesis of all academia: gaining understanding, disseminating understanding, and using understanding to defend and advance the greater good.
OUR GOAL
OUR GOAL
In the Goessling lab, we are zoologists who focus our efforts on understanding a diversity of proximate mechanisms and ultimate effects of environmental change on ectothermic tetrapods (i.e., reptiles and amphibians, "herps"). We are taxonomically biased in approach for two reasons. First, we all share at least a basic interest in, if not a love for, reptiles and amphibians; this bias is personal and of no specific scientific merit. Second, because their physiologies are uniquely tied to the environment, especially temperature, these taxa serve as prime experimental models for quantifying the effects of environmental change.
NEWS
NEWS
We are getting ready for an upcoming research trip to Aruba to collect more data for an ongoing snake conservation study. While in Aruba, we will be giving a series of public seminars with the Aruba Conservation Foundation about island-wide visions of conservation. We'd love to see you on Aruba!
We just published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science one of the most-fun studies we've conducted in our lab on behaviors of headstart baby Gopher Tortoises while in our on-campus rearing facility. A former student, Gabe, was a leading student researcher and coauthor on this paper. Gabe found that young tortoises are curious to meet stranger tortoises! Check back to read the final paper once it's finished with page proofing.
We recently returned from the annual Gopher Tortoise Council annual meeting, in Tallahassee Florida. Pixie, an Eckerd student and summer researcher from Egmont Key presented an awesome poster on her research on the island, and received a travel grant from the Gopher Tortoise Council to attend. Pixie represented us very well at the meeting! Dr. Goessling also received a Distinguished Service Award from the group.
We just published a multi-year study of invasive Boa Constrictors on Aruba and found that adult female snakes only exist in close association with human developments. This study was conducted with the help of several Eckerd students who conducted fieldwork on Aruba as well as did elaborate spatial analyses to quantify human effects of urbanization. Check it out here.
This past summer, we conducted follow-up mark-recapture surveys of our head-started Gopher Tortoises in Alabama. So far, so good! We saw lots of chunky tortoises that spent a few years of life on campus now thriving in their native southern Alabama forest. Other cool finds include rare (and quite large) native snakes at the study site! Results over the past three years of monitoring our headstarts show that the first cohort we released has an annual survival rate of around 93%, which is very high for young tortoises!
We wrapped up a six-week student internship on Egmont Key that took us out to the island to update the mark-recapture dataset of Gopher Tortoises there. This study started in 1994, and so far, we have marked more than a thousand individual tortoises! Check out some cool local media attention we got for this project here. The project was supported by The Egmont Key Alliance, Hubbards Marina (who provided daily ferry rides to the island), and several benefactors. Our interns, Jeff, Pixie, Sephie, and Tristan were all top-notch Eckerd students and did awesome jobs!
CONTACT
CONTACT
Please contact Dr. Goessling (goessljm@eckerd.edu) should you be interested in our work.
If you'd like to email our broader Goessling lab group (including numerous Eckerd students!), please email glab-users@eckerd.edu.
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