Bette Loiselle
Director & Professor
Tropical Conservation & Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
Email:
bloiselle@latam.ufl.edu
Phone: 956-273-4706
Dr. Bette Loiselle is currently Director, Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) Program in the Center for Latin American Studies and Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. Prior to joining the University of Florida in August 2011, Dr. Loiselle was a Division Director for Environmental Biology (DEB) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2010 and 2011 and Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis from 1990 to 2010. Her research is focused in tropical regions and includes studies of biodiversity and ecological services, ecology and dynamics of birds, and the applications of geographic information systems for biodiversity research and conservation.
For the past 20 years, she has been conducting studies in the Amazon rain forests of Ecuador; previous research experiences include work in Costa Rica, Colombia, Australia, and central Africa. Dr. Loiselle serves, or has served, as a member of a number of boards, including The Nature Conservancy-Missouri and the American Ornithologist Union, as Chair of the Board of Directors for the Organization for Tropical Studies, Advisory Committee for NSF’s Office of International Science and Engineering, and as an Associate Editor for The American Naturalist, a premier journal in the field of ecology. Dr. Loiselle’s awards include a Fulbright Scholarship to Argentina (2004), C. Brice Ratchford Memorial Fellowship Award - University of Missouri (2005), the William Brewster Memorial Award from the American Ornithological Society (2018), the Margaret Morse Nice Medal from the Wilson Ornithological Society (2020), and University of Florida Doctoral Mentoring Award (2022).
At the University of Florida, Dr. Loiselle directs an interdisciplinary program (TCD) designed to effectively contribute to conservation and development in tropical regions by crossing disciplines, linking academics to practitioners, and working in partnership with a wide range of stakeholders. Currently with funds from NSF and the Moore Foundation, TCD has built collaborative networks and Community of Practice and Learning working with partners in the Amazon to improve social-environmental governance and reduce threats from infrastructure development.
