The Department of Biology
The Biology Department is housed in the Cox Science Center on the beautiful Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami in southern Florida, gateway to the tropics. Our diverse internationally community has strong research focii ranging from Tropical Biology to Neuroscience. We interact with medical and marine campuses and exploit resources such as the Everglades, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, the Organization for Tropical Studies and our on-campus Gifford Arboretum. Our curriculum serves the largest Arts and Science major, Biology, as well as Marine Science and Neuroscience majors, and emphasizes experiential learning and research opportunities.

New faculty
In the last four years Biology has welcomed nine new faculty: two core facility manger/faculty James Baker and Carla Hurt, four junior faculty, Bill Browne, Julia Dallman, Isaac Skromne, and Alex Wilson, and three senior faculty, Akira Chiba, Kathryn Tosney and Athula Wikramanayake.

Search: endowed chair in tropical ecology
We seek to recruit a distinguished scientist whose work focuses on animals in the tropics. The generous gift of the Aresty Chair in Tropical Ecology fosters eminence in Tropical Ecology and undergraduate field work in the tropics. Send nominations or applications (CV, statement of research and teaching interests) to ArestyChair@bio.miami.edu. Applications received by December 1, 2009 will receive the fullest attention.

Facilities and new equipment


Featured research
Akira Chiba's lab described in Science a new way to see where proteins are active in live animals. Kamiyama et al. (2009) created an “in vivo bioprobe imaging technology” to reveal protein activation in live fruit fly embryos. This work is crucial because proteins can be present in a cell but inactive. Until now, we could not see when and where individual proteins are activated within live animals. Dr. Chiba said: “The idea of watching life at the molecular level within a cell in a living organism is really fascinating.”

Photo shows an entire fly embryo at an early (left) and later (right) stage in which a bioprobe has been activated in the central nervous system.


Leo Sternberg's research on ancient tree rings (pdf) has been highlighted in the prestigious journal Nature.  Dr. Sternberg, with Hope Jahren of Johns Hopkins University, studied the carbon, oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in tree rings of a “fossil forest” located in the far northwest Canadian Arctic and revealed changes in seasonal humidity that affected forest growth in the Eocene period, about 45 million years ago.


Grad Student Nathan Muchala's discovery of a gigantic tongue was published, as a sole-author paper, in the prestigious journal Nature. This bat appears to be the sole polinator of an extemely elongated flower of Centroogon nigricanse. Nathan found that the tongue of the tube-lipped nectar bat Aouna fistulata can reach 150 perent of its body length, and retracts into the rib cage.

Events
Seminars: Please come to departmental seminars on Mondays and informal seminars on Fridays. All seminars are at 12:20 in Cox 166.

The seminar for Mon Dec 7 by Clarissa Henry from the University of Maine is Dynamic roles for cell adhesion during muscle morphogenesis.. To talk with her, contact her host Julia Dallman.
Resources
Undergraduate advising
Graduate program info
Graduate program applications; Due Jan 1, 2010!
Lisa D. Anness Graduate Fellowship in Tropical Botany information
also see CAS magazine article about Lisa Anness (doc)
Database on invasive species
The Gifford Arboretum Calendar features talks, the yearly picnic (Dec 1) and plant sales

Featured course: ArtScience
Instructor: Keith D. Waddington,1 credit, offered Fall 2009
Goal of course: Illuminate process in art and science, compare and contrast these processes, and then use these processes in tandem to create novel ideas and products.

An Architecture major and two Biology students sample and quantify species diversity in a community (of Legos) that will be the data used to create an art-science piece.

Faculty research in the News
Dr. Barbara Whitlock, left, and UM student Megan Morris examine two microscope slides from the Swingle Plant Anatomy Collection.
Dr. Whitlock is known as a molecular systematist/botanist, but her passion for her topic ranges across the spectrum, covering all phases from evolution to ecosystems to anatomy. A recent featured article in e-Veritas (pdf) describes how she recognized a unique resource, a slide collection by one of the early greats in tropical botany, Walter Tennyson Swingle, saved it from a trip to the dumpster, and won a grant to move it into the digital age. With her insight and dedication, The Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection has become an internationally-available and much valued resource.

South Florida Ecosystem
View South Florida ecosystems, from entire environments to component plants and animals, in extraordinary photographs on the website of Vladimir Dinets, graduate student in Biology, whose research focuses on crocodilans.