VIII Brazilian Mycological Congress
Carlos Rojas and Randall Valverde visited during the period between October 3-7, the beautiful city of Florianopolis in southern Brazil. The objective of their visit was to attend the 8th Mycological Congress of the Brazilian Mycological Society.
The two visitors took part of the symposium on tropical myxomycetes put together by Dr. Laise Cavalcanti from Pernambuco. They offered talks on the situation of myxomycetes in Central America and the Neotropics and the influence of Neotropical researchers on the advancements of the discipline in the world. October 2016 |
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Visit to Madrid Botanical Gardens
Carlos Rojas, along with Pedro Rojas, from the Forest Resources Unit at the University of Costa Rica visited the Royal Botanical Gardens of Madrid in early September. They visited the myxomycete specialist Carlos Lado within the framework of a joint collaborative project designed to create a digital database of myxomycetes from Costa Rica.
Besides working on this project, the team established a series of meetings for the development of long-term research projects in Turrialba, Costa Rica. These projects will likely start in mid to late 2017 or during 2018. September 2016 |
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Myxoblitz in the Smoky Mountains
During the last week of July, several researchers and students interested in myxomycete research met at the Twin Creek Science and Education Center near the city of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The objective of this meeting was to discuss current information, state of the art and ideas for the future myxomycete research. Carlos Rojas took part of this discussion and formulated ideas, along with Dr. Adam Rollins, Dr. Steven Stephenson and Dr. Fred Spiegel for the development of new myxomycete research.
July 2016 |
Visitors from LMU
During the second week of July, two undergrad students from Lincoln Memorial University, Autumn Silva and Kristina Profitt, visited the Forest Resources Unit at the University of Costa Rica. The objective of their visit was to travel, along with Carlos Rojas and Hannah Guyer from Michigan State University, to the northwestern part of Costa Rica to collect a series of twig and bark samples for a joint research project between Carlos Rojas from University of Costa Rica and Dr. Adam W: Rollins from Lincoln Memorial University.
Their visit was a success and the group even had a chance to travel to the Caribbean part of the country (picture on the right) for a nice but wet experience in the lowland tropical rainforest. July 2016 |
Visitor from MSU
Hannah Guyer, a Michigan State University (MSU) student from the Biosystems Engineering Department has started a short-term research fellowship at ReForesta. She will stay until August 2016 working along with Carlos Rojas on the development of a protocol for isolation of myxogastrids using both temperate and tropical soils. The main research topic to evaluate is the potential negative effect of degraded soil on the microorganisms inhabiting this system.
June 2016 |
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Honduran visitors
As part of the program Carlos Rojas has on offering academic support to Central American students, two biology majors from the National Autonomous University of Honduras visited Costa Rica. These two students, Belquis Lemus and Indira Castro, spent the week between the 9th and the 13th of May interacting with the researchers and staff of ReForesta. They also visited the Irazú Volcano National Park and helped in routinary lab tasks. As part of their visit, Belquis and Indira designed research projects involving fungi to carry out a rapid assessment projects in Honduras later in 2016.
May 2016 |
Earth day talks in Lima
Taking advantage of Earth Day (April 22nd), Carlos Rojas visited the current president of the Latin American Mycological Association, Dr. Madgalena Pavlich, in the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia to discuss aspects related to the next Latin American Mycological Congress in Lima during 2017. The main objective of this visit was, however, to offer two talks entitled "The paradigm of the forests and the survival of the fittest" (same name as the book recently edited) and "Play with your food: recreational use of fungi in the world". These talks stressed the issues of intelligent use of natural resources and integrated planning towards sustainability.
April 2016 |
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Planning trip in Yucatan
In the beautiful region of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, there are still a number of localities that have not been surveyed for myxomycetes. As an effort to increase the understading in relation with the ecology and distribution of myxomycetes and a strategy to increase the number of deposited collections in formal repositories, Carlos Rojas visited the areas surrounding the city of Merida in order to establish the potential sampling sites for a future project with Dr. Arturo Estrada-Torres from the Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala. During this visit, Carlos also visited some of the impressive Mayan ruins still standing in the area.
April 2016 |
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Academic visit in Costa Rica
In March 2016, Dr. Arturo Estrada-Torres from the Autonomous University of Tlaxcala in Mexico visited the Forest Resources Unit at the University of Costa Rica in order to establish a link to exhange students and carry out joint research projects. Carlos Rojas and Randall Valverde received him and the group visited two locations in the field where they found four unrecorded species of myxomycetes for Costa Rica. An upcoming collaborative publication will feature these collections in a true joint effort to carry out research in Costa Rica.
March 2016 |
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Appalachian Mountains Visit
In February 2016, Carlos Rojas visited along with Pedro Rojas from ReForesta, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and professor Adam W. Rollins at Lincoln Memorial University. They also visited several managed areas in the Cumberland Mountains in Kentucky in order to 1) look for potential sites to visit with University of Costa Rica students in the near future and 2) to obtain information in relation with a soil isolation project currently taking place in Costa Rica.
February 2016 |
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Climate Change and Biodiversity Talk
During 2015, Carlos Rojas collaborated with the Department of Agricultural Engineering in the development of talks on climate change and biodiversity. The contents of such initiative, part of a broader project on climate change, are fully developed at the website www.clima.ucr.ac.cr.
January 2016 |
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