Dean Monette is a National Park Service Fellow and PhD candidate at Florida Atlantic University, where he teaches courses and also leads the research on the world’s frontrunner invasive exotic species, a snail. Pomacea maculata (the snail) is taking up residence in Lake Okeechobee, a large freshwater lake, and now it is threatening the livelihood of the endangered Snail Kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis plumbeus) primary food source of native species Pomacea paludosa. Monette’s project is to identify the competitive interactions, animal movement, dispersal, and life history applied across different spatial-temporal scales for ecosystem management purposes. Part laboratory analysis, part field studies, he draws upon Nova to accomplish biological and spatial statistics that model the distribution of the invasion.
Check out a video of Dean’s lab:
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