Collaboration in Mangrove Research

****The following is another post from Virginia Schutte, who is doing research in the mangrove forests of Panama and shooting for a series of short docs about the importance of mangrove ecosystems. View all her previous posts here.****

I am currently a postdoctoral scholar, which is just a fancy word for a scientist who’s just gotten their PhD but doesn’t have a permanent position yet.

I’m a real doctor scientist now!

I have officially been hired by both the University of Georgia in the USA and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. My position (with help from my labmate, Rachel Smith) is the glue between the 2 Principal Investigators on the project: Jeb Byers in Athens and Mark Torchin in Panama. Since Principal Investigators usually have several projects going on at once, they will often hire people to keep a project going while they teach, write papers, prepare grant applications, or travel to keep up their other projects.

Jeb and Mark have known each other since graduate school. They see each other at scientific conferences and after a particular set of workshops, realized that they had complementary points of view on similar issues that will help us paint a picture of community dynamics. They are both interested in mangrove forests. Jeb provides general expertise in predation, parasitism, and community theory while Mark knows our study organisms, study sites, and the specifics of parasite dynamics in this system like nobody else. Together, we are investigating how mangrove tree structure shapes predation and parasitism dynamics in a particular genus of snail. This snail is tied to many organisms that live in Panamanian mangrove forests.

These snails climb while a sister species does not, allowing us to test the role that mangroves play in shaping community dynamics. Predation on these snails helps us describe the function of forests in these communities, while parasitism rates may indicate how forests influence other diseases.

It took them years to arrive at ideas that were successfully funded, but that’s often how it goes!