King, an entomologist or insect expert, studies the invasive ant species and has found some startling results. While Floridians may spend thousands of dollars trying to eradicate them, the more the residents plant and change the landscape, the more the ants tend to thrive.

“There’s growing evidence that land-use change is one reason, if not the major reason for exotics,” King says in a short video featured on the National Science Foundation’s website this week.

Click here to see video.

In the Science Nation video, King and his coresearcher Walter Tschinkel at Florida State University talk about what we may be able to learn from these very complex social insects.

Science Nation is the foundation’s online magazine which debuts new scientific discoveries or news weekly. The NSF partially funds King’s work.

King is an assistant professor at UCF. His research focuses on understanding the fundamental mechanisms that drive species invasions associated with land-use changes. He’s been studying Florida’s native and non-native populations for the past 11 years and has found that contrary to popular belief, fire ants did not force native ants out of their natural habitats. Fire ants actually thrive because they move into areas where native species can’t survive – typically areas of massive soil disturbance, such as road-widening projects or mall construction.

The goal of King’s work is to improve the understanding of the consequences of land-use change and how events such as species invasions can be prevented or their impacts can be diminished.

King joined UCF in 2008. He has multiple degrees including a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Florida and a master’s degree in education from Tufts University.

The Florida Climate Institute is broadening to increase the effectiveness of current collaborations among universities and state and local agencies in Florida. It will promote additional cooperation with the private sector with a Florida-centric focus to help develop a climate-ready workforce and to provide information about the climate-related risks that are unique to the state. This broadened institute will bring together outstanding scientists from multiple universities to conduct research needed by Floridians on climate change and sea level rise, and it will provide education on economic and environmental opportunities and risks.

The FCI was originally developed with the goal of adding complementary expertise from other universities in Florida. A grant from the Board of Governors further emphasized the need for universities and external stakeholders throughout the state to collaborate. The Florida Climate Institute will now be expanded to include UCF, the University of South Florida, Florida Atlantic University and the University of Miami.

The institute brings together outstanding scientists from each university, along with the University of Florida and Florida State University, to conduct needed research to provide education on economic and environmental opportunities and risks associated with climate change. The coalition also increases the capacity of respective programs to compete for national and international funding programs and is working with the private sector to help develop a climate-ready workforce.

UCF’s alignment with the institute brings to the group the expertise of Scott C. Hagen, professor of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering and the director of UCF’s Coastal Hydroscience Analysis, Modeling and Predictive Simulations Laboratory (CHAMPS Lab), and Reed Noss, the Provost’s Distinguished Research Professor in Biology.

Hagen and Noss each lead research groups with extensive experience in the coastal dynamics of sea level rise.

Hagen’s CHAMPS Lab is conducting research on the long-term effects of rising sea level along the Florida Panhandle and Alabama and Mississippi coasts with a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The lab also is working on many projects related to the coastal dynamics of sea level rise. Several UCF faculty members, including biology professors Linda Walters and John Weishampel; Denise DeLorme, professor in the Nicholson School of Communication; Provost Professor George Yeh and Assistant Professor Dingbao Wang of the Department of Civil, Environmental & Construction Engineering, as well as researchers from UF and FSU are collaborating on that project . And Noss’ group is working with a $700,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation to map projected changes in sea level and identify species and populations that will have to migrate or face extinction.

“The core strength of all of our efforts at UCF is that they involve true interdisciplinary teams including faculty from the College of Sciences and the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Membership in the FCI means that we can further broaden our capability to work across disciplines and take advantage of institutional strengths,” said Hagen.

In addition to the NOAA and Kresge grants, UCF researchers have received an additional $1 million from agencies including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the St. Johns River Management District, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and Florida Sea Grant to study specific issues ranging from the plight of non-indigenous mussels, the extinction potential for the federally threatened Atlantic salt marsh snake and the effects on sea turtle, shorebird, seabird and beach mouse nesting from sea level rise.

“It’s clear that UCF has one of the nation’s strongest concentrations of research strength in the coastal dynamics of sea level rise, and much of that work is done in partnership between civil and environmental engineers and biologists,” said Michael Georgiopoulos, interim dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, home of the CHAMPS lab.

Michael Johnson, dean of the College of Sciences, which includes the Department of Biology, said, “Climate studies will be one of the most important areas of scientific investigation in coming decades. This initiative brings together a powerful team of researchers and can be expected to magnify the contributions they have made individually.”

The Florida Climate Institute will disseminate research results and resources through events, newsletters and a website, www.floridaclimateinstitute.org.

Wagers placed third under the Biomedical Research Section and was awarded a $1,000 scholarship.

She has received attention and praise from UCF professors for her hard work and dedication. Early this year, Wagers was awarded a $5,000 scholarship for books and tuition from the Hispanic Heritage Scholarship Fund.

To see more illustrations and read the full story from UCF Marketing by clicking here.

A study published today in the journal PLOS ONE describes how scientists at the University of Central Florida used a technique that links chemical signatures of the turtles’ diets and their watery environments to their migratory routes. They found the technique just as effective as expensive satellite tracking.

Little is known about the turtles, which spend 99 percent of their time in the water and return to the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge’s beach to nest once every two to three years. The 13-mile-long beach is home to the second-largest population of loggerheads in the world and to about one of every four nests those turtles lay in the United States.

While other turtles’ nests are increasing along the refuge’s shores, the loggerheads’ have been declining since 2000. The technique validated by the UCF scientists could help managers preserve the turtles’ nesting grounds, migration routes and foraging grounds, all of which are critical to their survival.

“We need good information so policy makers can focus the limited conservation funds available where they can make the greatest impact,” said Simona Ceriani, the UCF graduate student who led the study. “We all want our children to see these beautiful creatures and not just read about them in a book.”

In addition to validating the tracking technique, the study found that the foraging area for the Florida turtles is much broader than previously thought.

“Think of these turtles as Florida tourists and snowbirds,” Ceriani said. “They come and nest and then go back to lots of different places. And while we knew some went back north, we had no idea that this was a popular destination.”

Based on her tracking, some turtles head for the water off the shores of Virginia and Delaware while others go to the Bahamas and the Gulf of Mexico. Some stay off the coast of Central Florida’s beaches. Previously, scientists believed the majority of the loggerheads headed south.

While there are efforts to protect the turtle nests on the beaches, protecting their foraging grounds is equally important, biologists say. Many turtles die because they accidently get caught in fishing nets or encounter other dangers while out at sea.

The technique Ceriani validated should aid those efforts.

She took small blood samples from turtles at the refuge and completed a chemical analysis, which measured distinct markers known as stable isotopes. She also attached transmitters to the turtles so she could follow them using the more expensive but proven satellite tracking technique. The isotope approach proved to be equally useful, and it is much less expensive.

“By combining isotope research with satellite tracking technology, we are learning exciting information about loggerhead sea turtles,” said Daniel R. Evans, a research specialist at the Sea Turtle Conservancy and co-author of the research paper. “This research helps scientists and conservation managers identify key feeding areas for loggerhead turtles and helps direct policy and regulations that protect sea turtles in these specific areas.”

Ceriani said she will continue to research the migratory routes by adding more loggerheads to the study.

Ceriani earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Milan in Italy and was a research fellow at Florida Atlantic University before joining UCF’s PhD program in conservation biology in 2007.

Others who contributed to the study include: UCF Biologist, John Weishampel, James D. Roth from the University of Manitoba in Canada and Llewellyn M. Ehrhart from the Marine Turtle Research Group at UCF.

Several grants from Florida’s Sea Turtle Grants Program funded this study. The program gets is funding from the sale of the Florida Sea Turtle License Plate.

Sea turtle monitoring at the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge was coordinated through the University of Central Florida Marine Turtle Research Group, with funding from Brevard County, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States National Marine Fisheries Service.

As a sponsor, the College of Sciences had several members present including but not limited to Teresa Dorman, COS Assistant Dean, Talat Rahman from Physics, Jeff Cassisi from Psychology, Nicole Jobson from the Lou Frey Institute, Danielle Franco from NSC, Pedro Figueiredo from Physics, Amanda Nethero from NSC, Natasha Wedderburn from Psychology, Laurie VonKalm from Biology and Sheri Pearson from Biology.

As part of the event, guests were asked to bring non-perishable food products for distribution to the Knights Helping Knights Pantry. The photo above is a shot of the total food donated to Knights Pantry from the Diversity Breakfast guests.

Presentations, service projects, field day activities, workshops and other events are scheduled Oct. 15-19 for the University of Central Florida’s 20th-annual Diversity Week.

Some courses really need to be small to have an impact, while other content-driven courses can be large and still provide students with all the materials they need for success.

Critical judgments against large classes likely begin with a mental image of a professor arriving late, fighting with outdated technology on which he or she never was trained, talking in a whispered monotone about material they don’t know well – and of course, then the talking head disappears at the end of the class, not to be seen or heard from again until the next lecture. In reality, this scenario could happen in any size class.

The worst preconceived notion, however, is that professors of large classes do not care about their students or their learning. This is definitely not the case with the professors I know.

Here is how the Department of Biology runs its freshmen-level core courses with a “village” of trained individuals available to assist students to succeed. Our goals for the two-course freshmen majors sequence (Biology 1 and 2) are to:

1) make sure all students who successfully complete this course have a good understanding of the basics of the field;

2) introduce students to some of the many topics they need to be aware of as scientists  – including information fluency, ethics and plagiarism; and

3) train students to start thinking like scientists.

How do we achieve this in a large class?

Goal 1 is initiated by the professor who presents material in lecture. All Biology faculty members who teach large sections have frequented the UCF Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and have an arsenal of engagement methods for their classes – be they group activities, real-time response systems (e.g. clickers), or one-minute papers.

My current favorite is having students create YouTube-style videos on difficult course concepts, such as one group of students that used hand puppets to explain the steps involved in DNA replication, and another that solved genetics problems using a human foursquare board.

I don’t think some people realize that many college students in large classes are not afraid to ask questions during lectures.  In fact, in many classes there can be too many questions.

Students sitting toward the front of the room probably have no idea how many people are behind them. That is good. They are in their own learning world for the duration of each class.

After class, our professors assist students by holding office hours, answering hundreds of e-mail questions, and running test reviews.

But there is more.

We hire undergraduates who have done well in these classes to assist in lecture, hold additional office hours to help answer student questions (especially before exams), and provide group supplemental instruction and one-on-one tutoring through the Student Academic Resource Center.

And add to this Michele Yeargain, Biology’s amazing freshmen-course coordinator, who focuses on tracking grades and on the students themselves. In large classes there are lots of student-disability concerns and make-up tests to schedule. Out of 860 students (two classes of 430), we anticipate between 10 and 60 students will miss each of our 6 exams!

The individuals mentioned so far primarily help students learn content. Our required weekly, two-hour laboratories are run by 2 graduate students. As these students improve their communication skills, they lead labs designed to further reinforce course materials, proctor tests to better facilitate a small-class environment for this critical activity, and work toward completing Goals 2 and 3 (and creating the next generation of scientists).

In a perfect world (read that as funding with an unlimited budget), what would I change?

I would definitely make our labs smaller before tackling the size of lectures. Hundreds of studies document that small, inquiry-driven labs help students better understand the scientific process. I would also make sure the large classrooms are the nicest rooms on campus in terms of technology and physical appearance. And, of course, I would work toward decreasing our student-to-faculty ratio of 31:1.

So, at least in Biology, freshmen have a “village” each semester directly looking after their interests and well-being, as well as many more folks helping behind the scenes. This is very different than a single talking head that only exists during lecture.

Hats off to the professors and departments who make large classes work well.

The community needs to know faculty members treat these courses as an opportunity to positively impact the success of many students.

UCF Forum columnist Dr. Linda Walters is a biology professor at the University of Central Florida and director of the UCF Fellers House Field Research Station in Canaveral National Seashore. She can be reached atLinda.Walters@ucf.edu.

It happens the first Wednesday of every month in College Park, thanks to the Science Café Orlando. The event is free and food is available for purchase.

Science Café is a general description of an international movement that began five years ago in Europe and has taken off worldwide. Today, more than 200 science cafes operate worldwide including dozens in the United States. There are active cafes on the Space Coast, Daytona Beach and Tampa, as well.

The café sessions are informal talks with leading researchers aimed at bringing the latest developments in science and technology to the public, and showing how science is relevant to everyday life. Scientific jargon is kept to a minimum, but these are no watered-down sessions.

“They’re quite popular,” said Edward A. Haddad, executive director of the Florida Academy of Sciences, the nonprofit organization that organizes the sessions at Taste restaurant every month. “We get quite a cross section of people. We started small with about 20 people attending, and the last session on physics drew 85 people.”

This year, 10 professors from the College of Sciences at the University of Central Florida are providing their time and expertise to the Science Café.

“One of the joys of the sciences is that the work we do is important and – to many people – fascinating,” said Michael Johnson, dean of the college of sciences. “We thought that sharing some of our best research in the community through the Science Cafe would be a great way to celebrate UCF’s 50th birthday.”

Scientists are eager to share what they do and why it matters, he said. UCF professors have been active participants in the sessions for years, including Costas Efthimiou, a physics professor who gave a talk in September titled “A Theory About Everything.”

“Some of the most important questions of our time – climate change, energy policy, economic progress, etc. – depend crucially on scientific research,” Johnson said. “In a democracy, it is the citizens exercising their vote who set the country’s direction – and it is the responsibility of the scientific community to share important discoveries with interested people.”

Haddad is thrilled about the partnership with UCF.

“The Science Café is just one of many avenues the Florida Academy of Sciences uses to help improve the understanding of science in the community,” Haddad said. “We’re thrilled UCF is participating so heavily this year. I think the entire community will benefit.”

The public is invited to the free talks at Taste restaurant in College Park. Meals are optional. The talks begin at 7 p.m., but most people arrive earlier to enjoy the food.

Some of the college’s most interesting faculty members will be making presentations in the coming months. The speakers are:

Linda Walters, Biology, Oct. 3, 7 p.m.

Walter’s research focuses on human impacts in the marine environment. She is interested in both pure ecology questions and goal-based conservation issues for a wide range of marine and estuarine habitats in the Caribbean and the southeastern United States, especially the Indian River Lagoon system and the Florida Keys. She’s been featured in national publications and Volusia County declared a Linda Walters Day in appreciation for her efforts to preserve the marine environment in the area.

Kevin Belfield, Chemistry, Nov. 7, 7 p.m. 

Belfield is chair of the Chemistry Department and a Pegasus Professor. He designs nanostructured materials for 3-D optical data storage, multiphoton fluorescent probes and bio-imaging for early tumor detection and image-guided surgery, photodynamic therapy agents, nanostructured functional organic and polymeric materials, and photochromic materials.

Jim Wright, Sociology, Dec. 5, 7 p.m.

Wright is an author, educator, and the Provost’s Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Sociology. He has published 21 books and more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, essays, reviews, and polemics on topics ranging from poverty to homelessness to guns in America to NASCAR.

Humberto Campins, Physics, Jan. 9, 7 p.m.

Campins is an international expert on asteroids and comets. He was on the first team that discovered asteroids had water and he is a member of two teams that will be sending spacecraft to collect samples in the next five years. He is a Provost Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy and head of the Planetary and Space Science Group.

Eduardo Salas, Psychology, Feb. 6, 7 p.m. 

Salas is a national expert in team dynamics and why they are important. He is a University Trustee Chair and Pegasus Professor of Psychology at UCF. He also holds an appointment as program director for Human Systems Integration Research Department at UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training.  He was a senior research psychologist and head of the Training Technology Development Branch of NAVAIR-Orlando for 15 years.

Talat Rahman, Physics, March 6, 7 p.m.

Rahman is a theoretical physicist and the chair of the physics department. Rahman is internationally renowned for her research in computational nanoscience. Her research finds ways to engineer materials at the nanoscale with optical, magnetic, vibrational, and chemical properties needed for a variety of applications – “building” the materials on the computer, atom by atom. She is a Pegasus Professor.

Peter Hancock, Psychology, April 3, 7 p.m .

Hancock’s research expertise is in the area of stress, workload and performance. He has written multiple books and conducted several studies that look at the impact of stress on the human psyche and on performance. He is a Pegasus Professor and Provost Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Simulation & Training, as well as at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at UCF, where he is the director of the MIT2 Research Laboratories.

Arlen and Diane Chase, Anthropology, May 1, 7 p.m.

When Arlen and Diane Chase first traveled to Caracol in 1983, the city was covered by Belizean jungle. In more than 25 years of research, the husband-and-wife anthropologists have pieced together what Diane describes as “a much more complete story about Caracol,” one of the largest Mayan cities. Arlen Chase is chair of the Department of Anthropology and a Pegasus Professor. Diane Chase is the executive vice provost and a Pegasus Professor.

In an effort to improve the environment, the College of Sciences made the tradition a green event this year. Guests and volunteers had the opportunity to plant mangrove plants and build oyster mats that will aid in recreating reefs at Canaveral National Seashore’s Mosquito Lagoon.

Dr. Linda Walters from the UCF Biology program led the green efforts and volunteers were given free green bandanas to wear to the UCF football game later in the day. In total, 940 plants were potted and 105 oyster mats were completed at the Open House.

While guests had the opportunity to get their hands dirty outside, more Open House activities were held in-conjunction inside the Nicholson School of Communication.

The College of Sciences had bags full of UCF literature and free give-a-ways for guests, who also had the opportunity to visit a variety of tables that had information on the UCF Arboretum, research from UCF Biology graduate students, touch tanks with living organisms, UCF Alumni Association and the Nicholson School of Communication.

After visiting UCF staff, students and volunteers at various tables, guests had the opportunity to go on a Communication Ride, which stopped at various stations set up to explain the dynamic departments within NSC including the Journalism program, the Advertising program and the Radio and Television group.

Dr. Tim Brown led a mixed group of RTV students and Open House volunteers through the UCF television study. Tours left every 20 minutes and gave volunteers the opportunity to put on a newscast.

The Central Florida Future wrote a review of the College of Sciences Open House, which you can read by clicking here.