CURRENT
STUDENTS
Undergraduates
Jaiho
(Jay) Chang began research in the lab in the summer of 2009. He
will be georeferencing occurrrence records of Heteromys from Colombia, to
provide occurrence data for future GIS-modeling research. He is interested
in veterinary science.
Sam
Glickman has worked in the lab since Spring 2009. A biology major
planning to specialize in veterinary science with "exotic" animals,
Sam is conducting Honors research in avian phylogenetics supervised by Dr. Jeff
Groth at the American Museum of Natural History. In addition, he is
working in my lab, assisting with many projects.
Judith Rivas
began research in the lab in the summer of 2009. She will be
georeferencing occurrrence records of Heteromys from Colombia, to provide
occurrence data for future GIS-modeling research. She is interested in
possible careers in health and environmental biology.
Jhanine Rivera
began research in the lab in the summer of 2009. She will be
georeferencing occurrrence records of Heteromys from Colombia, to provide
occurrence data for future GIS-modeling research. She is interested in
possible careers in environmental biology.
Mariya
Shcheglovitova is an undergraduate in the City College Fellows
program who began working in the lab in the summer of
2007. Mariya, who grew up in New York City, is pursuing dual majors in biology and mathematics.
She completed her Honors Thesis in Biology in May 2009: "A jackknife
approach to tuning Maximum Entropy models of species geographic distributions
with few occurrence records: tests with spiny pocket mice (Heteromys) in
South America." Her GIS research originally was aimed at providing conservation
assessments for South American species of Heteromys with small
ranges. She began with H. teleus; her models of its
potential geographic distribution are being used by our Ecuadorean colleague
Santiago Burneo and his students, who selected field sites based on her
predictions. This research led Mariya to the more-general question of
assessing uncertainty in model predictions for species with very few occurrence
records, research she presented at the Evolution 2008 meetings in Minneapolis
and the biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society in 2009
(funded by an IBS travel award). Mariya also participated in our fieldwork in Aragua, Venezuela
in April 2008. Mariya was selected
for an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) internship at Humboldt
State University for the summer of 2008 and awarded
the 2009 Gerald Brenner Scholarship from the Division of Science at CCNY (one of
the highest honors bestowed by the Division).
Mariya
Shcheglovitova off campus.
Master's
students
Aleksandar
(Aleks) Radosavljevic
began the CCNY master's program in biology in the fall 2007 semester and joined
the lab in the spring of 2008. An avid outdoorsman from northern New
Jersey, Aleks did his undergraduate work in Biology at Marymount University in
Virginia. Subsequently, he traveled widely in South America and then was
employed at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History on
the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield Program. Aleks' master's thesis
assesses ways to avoid overfitting of models of species geographic distributions,
leading to increased
transferability of the models across space and time. His current
research on this topic addresses transferability in the Caribbean spiny pocket
mouse Heteromys anomalus and is in collaboration with Darla Thomas (see
below). Aleks won
a
travel award from the International Biogeography Society to attend and present
this work at the biennial meeting of the Society in Mérida, Mexico in January
2009. Read
more (third story). He will present his work again this summer at the
94th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Albuquerque, New
Mexico.
Aleks Radosavljevic in
Torres del Paine, Chile.
Ph.D.
students
Eliécer
Gutiérrez began his Ph.D.
studies through the CUNY Graduate Center in August 2005. I am his
research mentor. Eliécer is interested in the systematics and
biogeography of Neotropical mammals. He received his
undergraduate degree at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela
and later worked for the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas
(IVIC) in Caracas, Venezuela. While at CCNY, he completed a manuscript
reporting the findings of his undergraduate research on the bat genus Pteronotus
in Venezuela; the manuscript is now published in the Journal of
Mammalogy. Eliécer has collaborated with me on a systematic
revision of spiny pocket mice (Heteromys) in Venezuela (which he
presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists in 2007;
the resulting manuscript is now in press). He also participated in the fieldwork that José
Ochoa-G., Marisol Aguilera, and I conducted in Falcón,
Venezuela in 2006 and Aragua, Venezuela in 2008. His dissertation research focuses on the
systematics, biogeography, and evolution of mouse opossums of the genera Marmosa
and Micoureus. Recently, Eliécer received grants from the
American Society of Mammalogists and the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund of the American Museum of Natural History to
fund DNA sequencing for his dissertation research.
Eliécer Gutiérrez in the
field (Sierra de San Luis, Falcón, Venezuela).
Mariano Soley
began the CUNY Ph.D. program in the Fall 2008 semester, and I am his
research mentor. He is interested in the systematics and evolution of
vertebrates, especially rodents and marsupials. As an undergraduate, he studied biology at the
Universidad de Costa Rica. During and subsequent to his undergraduate
training, he gained ample field experience. He has served on the staffs of
several biological reserves in Costa Rica, organizing field courses and advising
students on field research projects. Currently, he is leading a research
project in my lab (in collaboration with Darla Thomas, Eliécer Gutiérrez, and
others), using GIS techniques to model the potential geographic distributions of
the three species of rodents found on Cerro Santa Ana in northwestern Venezuela
(Heteromys oasicus, Proechimys guairae, and Rhipidomys
venezuelae). Mariano will present results from his research at the
89th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists this summer, in
Fairbanks, Alaska.
Mariano Soley in the field
(another facultatively arboreal doctoral student).
PAST
ASSOCIATED STUDENTS
Past
associated undergraduates
Sean Claxton is an undergraduate who
worked in the lab in the fall semester of 2006. He conducted an
independent research project modeling the distributions of spiny pocket mice of
the genus Heteromys in Ecuador. These species are restricted to forested habitats, and their
distributions have been drastically reduced by deforestation. Sean is
currently a NYPD police officer and plans to continue his academic studies soon.
Sean Claxton explains his
research to a fellow student at the 2006 CCAPP Annual Poster Presentation.
Israel
Gonzalez completed his undergraduate degree in biology at City College in
2006 and has conducted independent research with me
since the fall 2005 semester. He has used GIS to study the distribution
of an Andean shrew, Cryptotis meridensis in Venezuela (continuing a
project begun by Martha Perez and Tiffany Johnson; see below). His
methodological research used C. meridensis to assess optimal settings for
regularization (a coefficient that penalizes complex models and represents a
safeguard against overfitting) using the Maxent method for modeling species
distributions. He assessed the performance of models at several low
sample sizes, as well as the use of various feature classes (of environmental
variables). Israel presented this research at the meeting of the American
Society of Mammalogists in 2006, and we are finishing a manuscript
that we will submit for publication. Israel
received the prestigious 2007 Jonas E. Salk Scholarship, an award that is given based on outstanding academic record, quality of research project, and
volunteer work. He is currently a
medical student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He is interested
in using his GIS skills to study health disparities in minority populations.
Israel
Gonzalez preparing his ASM poster.
Martha
Perez conducted undergraduate independent-study research during the Fall
2004 semester (GIS-based studies of the distribution of an Andean shrew, Cryptotis
meridensis in Venezuela). Undergraduate student Israel Gonzalez (see
above) is continuing
this research, building on the base that Martha made. Martha is currently
a student at the SUNY/University at
Buffalo medical school.
Martha Perez
(profile).
Iván Plácido
pursued studies in biology and business at CCNY. He worked in the
Anderson lab assisting with several research projects from fall 2003 to summer
2005. Iván is currently an EMT with the FDNY in the South Bronx.
Iván Plácido
celebrates graduation.
Nadir
Rana
finished his undergraduate degree in 2007. He worked in the lab in the fall semester of
2006 and spring semester of 2007. His independent research project
entailed using GIS to model the distributions of spiny pocket mice of the genus Heteromys
in Ecuador (see research of Sean Claxton, above) and Trinidad and Tobago.
Nadir is currently preparing applications for medical school and working as a
Pathology Technician at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Nadir Rana.
Ali Raza
worked in the lab as an undergraduate beginning in the summer of 2006. For the fall 2006 and spring 2007
semesters, he conducted an independent
research project modeling the distributions of climbing mice of the genus Rhipidomys
in northern Venezuela. We were especially interested in the predictions in
Falcón state, where I have conducted fieldwork (see Research).
Ali was
one of the three winners of the 2007 American Society of Mammalogists'
Undergraduate Student Research Award.
Selected based on a written
application, the award
recognizes students for the originality and quality of research that they will
present at the Society's annual meeting. His talk was titled "Effect
of study region for GIS models of distributions and niche overlap in Rhipidomys." Subsequent to graduation with a
degree in Biology, Ali applied these
approaches to study the distributions of species of the genus Nephelomys
in Venezuela. During the summer of 2008, he submitted a manuscript for
publication based on this research. Ali is currently enrolled in the City
College master's program in biology.
Ali Raza being congratulated by
Dr. Robert Timm, President of the American Society of Mammalogists, at the 2007
meeting of the Society in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Darla
Thomas was an undergraduate in the lab from spring 2008 to fall 2008.
She graduated from CCNY with a degree in Biology. A native of Oakland, California, Darla
worked on a GIS project
associated with our NSF grant and Venezuelan field program. Darla was
selected as an Undergraduate Diversity Scholar; this
funded her travel to Evolution 2008, the joint meeting of the Society for the Study of
Evolution, the American Society of Naturalists, and the Society for Systematic Biology, where
she presented a poster
on her GIS research entitled "Do small mammals inhabit novel climatic
conditions on the Península
de Paraguaná in northwestern Venezuela?" Read
more (fourth story)
She also won a travel award from the International Biogeography Society to attend and present
this work at the biennial meeting of the Society in Mérida, Mexico in January
2009. Read
more (third story).
In addition, Darla worked with Aleks Radosavljvic (see above) on a methodological study aimed at
increasing model transferability across space and time.
Darla Thomas.
Past
associated master's
students
None.
Past
associated Ph.D.
students
Tiffany
Johnson began her Ph.D. studies through the CUNY Graduate Center in
August 2004. She did an informal research "lab
rotation" with me in 2004 and 2005. During the fall of 2004, Tiffany
worked with Martha Perez (see below) on a GIS-based project on the distribution
of an Andean shrew, Cryptotis meridensis in Venezuela. In the
summer of 2005, she had an internship with the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx
Zoo in New York City. Tiffany has now begun Ph.D. research at Queens
College of CUNY.
Dr. Marcelo
Weksler conducted his Ph.D. studies and research supervised by Dr.
Robert S. Voss at the American Museum of Natural History. During the Fall
semester of 2004, Marcelo collaborated with me on phylogenetic analyses of the
evolutionary relationships among species of spiny pocket mice (order Rodentia:
family Heteromyidae: subfamily Heteromyinae), using morphological and genetic (allozymic)
data (see Publications).
Marcelo graduated in February 2005
and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at the University of
Alaska, working with Dr. Link Olson. In 2007, he began a second postdoc,
this one at the American Museum of Natural History, working with Dr. Meng Jin on
an NSF Tree of Life grant.
Iván Plácido
(former undergraduate student).
Tiffany Johnson (Ph.D.
student, left) and
Martha Perez (then-undergraduate student, right).
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R. P. Anderson
Copyright © 2004-2009.
Some photographs by RPA; others provided by
students.
Last modified: 3 June 2009 (RPA)
