Dr. Kenneth J. Feeley

kjfeeley@miami.edu

University of Miami
Smathers Chair of Tropical Tree Biology
Director of the Gifford Arboretum
Department of Biology
Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA
Phone: 305-284-5748

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
11935 Old Cutler Rd.
Coral Gables, FL 33156, USA

Download CV (current as of July 2024)

GABRIELA A. GARCIA-REYNAGA

Gabriela is from Peru and graduated from the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina with a BSc in Biology, with an emphasis on Ecology. Her past research focused on studying the eco-morphological traits that drive the interaction network between epiphytic orchids and their hosts in a montane cloud forest. Gabriela has also worked in Costa Rica, leading a project about the diversity of epiphytes in rare and threatened trees of the Osa Peninsula. For her doctoral dissertation research, Gabriela plans to investigate how ecological interactions in the rainforest are being affected by climate change, using the Boiling River, Peru, as a model study system. 

Lina Aragón

Lina got her undergraduate and Masters degreed in Biology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and her second master's degree in Biology at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Lina studies the physiology and ecology of plants in order to better understand how they can persist under extreme environmental conditions worldwide. Moreover, by studying plant ecophysiology, she hopes to increase our understanding of how plants might respond to climate change.

Learn more at: https://linamaragonb4.wixsite.com/my-site

Riley fortier

Riley graduated from the University of Oregon with a BS in Environmental Science in 2017. Afterwards, he worked as a Resident Naturalist in Costa Rica, guiding hikes and leading workshops for students and tourists. Riley later went to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and investigated how plant reproduction is limited by soil nutrients. Riley has also worked in Peru, helping lead a tropical ecology field course with Wildlands Studies. Riley joined the Jungle Biology team as a PhD student in Fall 2020. His dissertation research investigates the effects of climate and anthropogenic disturbances (mining, logging and agriculture, etc.) on the functional and taxonomic composition of Amazonian forests.

Learn more at www.rileyfortier.com

​Laís Lautenschlager Rodrigues

Laís earned her BS. in Ecology (2016) and MSc. in Ecology and Biodiversity (2019) at the São Paulo State University in her home country of Brazil. Her past research has focused on frugivory and seed dispersal, forest fragmentation, agricultural landscape, and livestock effects on mammal communities. Her doctoral research at UM aims to understand the role of large tropical ungulates, especially the Lowland Tapir (Tapirus terrestris), in maintaining and promoting plant diversity in Barzil's Atlantic Rainforest.

Learn more at: https://ecologyetal.wordpress.com/

Camilo Palacios-Hurtado

Camilo is deeply interested in disentangling the drivers and ecological interactions that define the assemblage plant communities in the Choco Biogeographic Region in Colombia, one of the most important - but least understood - biodiversity hotspots on the planet.

Learn more at: https://sites.google.com/view/camilopalacios-hurtado

Cleber Chaves

Cleber is an eco-evolutionary biologist studying the ecological factors driving patterns of organisms' thermal response and species distributions in the past, present, and future. He completed a degree in Biology in 2011 and a Master's in Plant Biology in 2013, both from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil). Cleber earned his Ph.D. in Ecology and Biodiversity in 2019 from the São Paulo State University (Brazil), including a 6-month stay at the Technische Universität Dresden (Germany).

Cleber is completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Evolutionary Ecology and Plant Genomics at the University of Campinas (Brazil). As part of his fellowship, Cleber is based at the JungleBiology lab for the 2024/25 academic year where he will work with Dr. Feeley to research how spatio-temporal changes in temperature affect the distribution and evolution of organisms and how their interactions among each other shaped communities. His main focus is on the evolution of thermal tolerance in Pitcairnia flammea, a bromeliad species with a naturally patchy distribution on the inselbergs of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

Read more about Cleber at: https://cleberchaves.wixsite.com/

Isabella Childress

Isabella (Izzie) is an undergraduate student majoring in biology at the University of Miami. Much of her lab experience comes from the Feeley Lab, and she has recently begun applying this knowledge to her research projects at Montgomery Botanical Center. She is currently investigating pollen extraction and preservation in species resistant to conventional pollen banking. She is particularly interested in plant-microbe-pollinator networks and the conservation of underrepresented species affected by rapid climate change. Izzie hopes to eventually obtain a Ph.D., utilizing the skills she's learned while assisting in the Feeley Lab.

Rachel Collins

Rachel is an undergraduate senior biology major at the University of Miami. She has been involved in climate change advocacy, working with organizations such as The Cleo Institute, 350 South Florida, and Fridays for Future Miami. Currently, Rachel is conducting research on leaf functional traits using herbarium samples.