ATBC 2024 Student and Early Career Awards

Abstract

The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) recognizes the exceptional research of students and early career scientists through awards presented at the ATBC annual conferences. The ATBC is pleased to announce the 2024 winners of these awards:

The Luis F. Bacardi Award for Advances in Tropical Conservation is awarded to the best conservation talk presented during the ATBC Annual Conference by an early career scientist (i.e., a researcher who received his/her Ph.D. no more than 5 years before the meeting date). This award was established in 2005 with an endowment from the Lubee Bat Conservancy, an international nonprofit organization based in Gainesville, Florida, USA. The Lubee Bat Conservancy was founded in 1989 by the late Luis F. Bacardi and is dedicated to protecting biological diversity through the conservation of fruit- and nectar-feeding bats. At the 2024 ATBC Annual Meeting, Meghna Bandyopadhyay from Wildlife Trust of India was awarded the Luis F. Bacardi Award for her presentation entitled “What decides coexistence of carnivores; size or behavior?”

The Alwyn Gentry Presentation Awards were established to recognize outstanding oral and poster presentations given by students at the ATBC Annual Conference. Alwyn Gentry (1945–1993) was a prominent botanist who made exceptional contributions to the study of the diversity and conservation of tropical plants and to the training of students from the Americas. These awards are in remembrance and recognition of the contributions of this singular scientist, colleague, supportive mentor, and friend. At the 2024 ATBC Annual Meeting, Liam Jasperse-Sjolander from the University of Colorado Boulder, United States, was awarded the Alwyn Gentry Award for the Best Oral Presentation for his talk entitled “Habitat and fruit availability drive forest elephant fission-fusion dynamics in a forest-savannah mosaic.” The awardees for the Alwyn Gentry Award for the Best Poster Presentation were Simran Prasad from the Centre for Wildlife Studies, India, for her presentation entitled “An elephantine problem in the Nilgiris: Examining household wealth inequities and community attitudes towards elephants” and Katherine Culbertson from the University of California, Berkeley, United States, for her presentation entitled “Arrested rainforest regeneration? Changing disturbance regimes and non-forest vegetation impair natural recovery in a hyperdiverse, endangered rainforest landscape.”

The New Phytologist Trust graciously funds annual awards to recognize achievements in Plant Biology by student authors presenting at the ATBC Annual Meeting. At the 2024 Annual Meeting, the New Phytologist Prize for Best Poster in Plant Biology was awarded to Sarafina Masanja from the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania, for her poster entitled “Impact of agricultural expansion on tree species composition and diversity along elevation gradients in Pangawe West Forest Reserve, Morogoro, Tanzania.” The New Phytologist Prize for Best Oral Presentation in Plant Biology was awarded to Beibei Zhang from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, for her oral presentation entitled “Soil fertility drives large and predictable shifts in canopy dynamics in a tropical rainforest.”

The ATBC is honored by all who chose to present their work at the 2024 Annual Meeting and congratulates these recipients for their outstanding contributions to tropical biology and conservation.

The ATBC is also honored to be able to award the Navjot Sodhi Conservation Research Award each year to a student or recent graduate from a developing country conducting research in tropical conservation biology. This award is in remembrance and recognition of the contributions of our dear colleague and friend Navjot Sodhi, who inspired many students and colleagues with his passion for research and the conservation of tropical biodiversity. Priyanka Hari Haran, a Ph.D. student from the University of Florida, United States, was awarded the 2024 Navjot Sodhi Conservation Research Award for her project entitled “How can agricultural landscapes better support bird species interactions?”

The ATBC promotes the professional development of students working in the areas of tropical biology and conservation by awarding seed grants to support graduate student research. With generous support from the Maxwell–Hanrahan Foundation, the ATBC was able to award a total of 14 Seed Grant Awards in 2024. The ATBC is pleased to announce the 2024 winners of the Seed Grants, which are as follows:

Nagarathna Balakrishna (Ohio State University, USA)

Title: An integrative approach to conserving the critically endangered Indri indri in Madagascar.

Project Location: Madagascar

Sachin Bhaskar (IISER TVM, India)

Title: Floral traits and flower-cheater dynamics in the southern Western Ghats.

Project Location: India

Marco Antonio Chiminazzo (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil)

Title: Assessing woody species strategies in tropical ecosystems: insights for future resilience across savannas and forests.

Project Location: Brazil

Manuel Flores (Yale University, USA)

Title: Investigating differences in edge effects between planted forest and pastureland on secondary forests in Brazil.

Project Location: Brazil

Sofía Patricia León Molina (Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador)

Title: Beneath the Waves: Sexual maturity of the Galapagos bullhead shark (Heterodontus quoyi).

Project Location: Ecuador

Noor Laina Maireda (Ohio University, USA)

Title: Estimating bornean flat-headed frog (Barbourula kalimantanensis) potential distribution using mechanistic niche modeling

Project Location: Malaysia

Manan Pankaj Mehta (Ashoka University, India)

Title: Following the fates of fruits and seeds in plant-frugivore interactions: assessing scale-dependent responses and their consequences.

Project Location: India

Shubham (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, India)

Title: The roots of the matter: Linking root traits to rhizosphere microbes and root exudation to understand plant species coexistence in Western Ghats, India.

Project Location: India

Carlos Andrés Ordóñez Parra (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)

Title: To germinate or not germinate: germination traits and risk-spreading strategies meet in the Brazilian Cerrado.

Project Location: Brazil

Sumashini Sundararajan Pagaldevatti (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Title: Edge effects on seed-fungal interactions in the tropical evergreen forests of Western Ghats, India.

Project Location: India

Joselice da Silva Pereira (State University of Paraíba, Brazil)

Title: What is the potential of street trees as a refugia for the biodiversity of herbivorous insects? Taxonomic structure and composition and diversity of interactions in semiarid tropical cities.

Project Location: Brazil

Gabriela Quesada-Ávila (University of South Florida, USA)

Title: Seed germination and seed microbial interactions of tropical tree species under elevated temperature.

Project Location: Panama

Veronarindra Ramananjato (University of California Berkeley, USA)

Title: Cascading impacts of the collapse of mutualistic interactions in tropical forests.

Project Location: Madagascar

Samantha Turner-Rosa (University of Maryland, USA)

Title: Nectar, Pollinators, and Tropicalization: Investigating mangrove floral ecology during an active geographic range expansion.

Project Location: Florida, USA

We thank the members of the Grants and Awards Committee of the ATBC for volunteering their time to review applications for the Navjot Sodhi Conservation Award and Seed Grant Award, and evaluating presentations for all awards during the ATBC 2024 Annual Conference. We also thank the many volunteer judges who assessed presentations for all awards at the Annual Conference.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.