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In an article published August 13th, 2020, Science Magazine describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an "anthropause" in a variety of systems around the planet. The paper (found here) mentions a current Witman Lab project that characterizes the effect of reduced tourism on marine community dynamics in the Galapagos Archipelago. Check it out! 
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Dr. Witman and collaborators from around the world were published in Nature Climate Change this past Monday, April 27th, 2020. Their paper, "Evolution of Galapagos in the Anthropocene", focuses on the increasing globalization of the Galapagos Archipelago and its role as a living laboratory that can be used to study human impact in conjunction with climate change. The paper can be found here -- check it out!  Dr. Robbie Lamb and Dr. Jon Witman to speak at “Sustainable Oceans: from Port to Plate” in RI!10/11/2019 Later this month, both Dr. Witman and Dr. Lamb will be speaking at the Sprout CoWorking Art Galleries in Warren, Rhode Island. Their talks will focus on the health of the oceans and the role of consumers in protecting marine life, and we would love to see you all there! The presentations will be accompanied by a responsibly sourced seafood meal prepared by a local chef, a jazz concert, and art gallery exhibition. The gallery will be featuring artwork that focuses on the beauty and vulnerability of the oceans, and we are proud that the Witman Lab will be able to be a part of their mission to inspire public awareness and change! 
Marisa has received an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award for her study, "Behavioral ecology of top predators in the Galapagos Marine Reserve." Maya has received a Voss Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Environmental Science and Communication, as well as an Explorers Club student grant for her study, "Niche complementarity and ecological function of damselfish in the Galapagos Marine Protected Area."
Both Maya and Marisa are also the recipients of Marine Conservation Scholarships from the Women Divers Hall of Fame. Congratulations!  Photo showing the high cover of mat forming cyanobacteria (brown areas) during the 2014–16 El Niño. Photo: J. Witman Fiona Beltram, a recent graduate of the Witman Lab, recently published her honors thesis. Her work describes how the unusually warm temperatures of the 2014–2017 El Niño facilitated the novel appearance of cyanobacterial mats in the Galapagos rocky subtidal zone, which can have negative effects on the marine benthic community. Read the whole thing here!   Witman Lab representing our new logo at the Benthic Ecology Meeting in St. John's, Canada It's been a whirlwind of presentations, awards, travel, and thesis defenses in the past few months, and we have a lot to celebrate.
Benthic Ecology Meeting 2019 Seniors Hallie Fischman and Calvin Munson gave talks at the BEM, with Hallie winning an honorable mention for best student poster talk. Junior Maya Greenhill, Dr. Robbie Lamb, Dr. Jon Witman, and collaborator Alejandro Pérez-Matus all gave wonderful talks. We made new friends and connections studying everything from marshes to polar ecology. Even though St. John's was freezing, we still had a great time! Thesis Talks Seniors Hallie Fischman and Calvin Munson, and junior Maya Greenhill gave thesis talks at the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department Seminar –"Optimizing coastal dune restoration with the stress gradient hypothesis," "Coupled effects of herbivory and upwelling on Galapagos benthic communities," and "Niche complementarity and ecological function of damselfish in the Galapagos marine reserve."
Big congrats to the whole lab – now onto gearing up for field season!
 New York Times writer Nicholas Casey interviews Robert Lamb en route to dive at Rocas Beagle, at the moment Robbie's article on El Niño - driven fish disease in the Galapagos was published Check out the feature article on the front page of the New York Times! Written by Nicholas Casey and with stunning images and video from land, air and sea by Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Josh Haner, this is a multi-media multi-story project that highlights our work on corals and fish as part of the suite of organisms affected by El Niño. Also featured are our friends at the Charles Darwin Station and Galapagos National Park including Dr. Heinke Jager. It paints a compelling picture of sweeping environmental effects of climate change being felt in the Galapagos Islands.
 Featured in the recent GC blog post, members of the Witman Lab survey the reef at Pinzon Island as a school of endemic striped salema (Xenocys jessiae) swim overhead. Photo credit: Alejandro Perez-Matus. Research efforts by the Witman Lab to characterize the response of Galapagos marine ecosystems to climate change and El Niño are currently funded by the Galapagos Conservancy. This is the only US non-profit dedicated to conserving the wildlife of the Galapagos Islands. Read a recent blog post about our work with GC over the past year!
  Undergraduates Calvin Munson ('19) and Maya Greenhill ('20) gave their first talks on their thesis research projects at the Charles Darwin Foundation. These talks presented preliminary research from the past two months of field work examining local to regional controls on sea floor productivity. At the regional scale, Calvin's work examines how the abundance of algae and invertebrates changes along gradients of upwelling in the Galápagos subtidal, in addition to how the diversity of herbivorous fishes affects ecosystem functioning in the form of resource utilization. At local scales, Maya's research is on damselfish territories as a major source of algal productivity on the rocky reef, focusing on species-specific differences in agal composition, depth zonation, and defense capacity that indicate complementarity in providing this important ecosystem function. Professor Jon Witman put these studies into context, summarizing and updating on how repeated El Niño/ La Niña cycles are shaping marine communities of benthic invertebrates and reef fish over 20 years of long term monitoring.
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