Terrestrial Habitat Research
About
Terrestrial Habitat researchers study the ecology and management of Florida’s forest, savanna, and ephemeral wetland ecosystems, which are essential to wildlife and biodiversity conservation. Fire features prominently in nearly everything we do, as many of Florida’s most diverse terrestrial ecosystems are fire-dependent. Over the last century. the widespread practice of fire suppression caused the degradation of many of Florida’s fire-dependent terrestrial ecosystems, leading to the loss of both plant and animal biodiversity. Our lab helps support conservation in Florida through applied research that improves our understanding of plant community ecology in fire-dependent terrestrial ecosystems, helps develop techniques for successfully and safely restoring Florida’s terrestrial ecosystems, and informs strategies for propagating and reintroducing native plant species to sites where they have been extirpated.
Who We Are
Johanna Freeman, PhD
Team Leader
Amber Gardner, PhD
Research Associate
Shawn Clemons
Lab Manager/Research Assistant
Bailey Piper
Research Technician/Project Manager
Lauren Trotta
Biological Scientist II/Data Analyst
Alyssa Ward
Research Technician/Project Manager
Current Projects
- Ephemeral wetland restoration for flatwoods salamanders and associated species
- Hardwood reduction in sandhills
- Accelerating sandhill restoration in the Trail Ridge region
- Harper’s Beauty (Harperocallis flava) seed biology and micropropagation
- Plant-pollinator networks in fire-maintained sandhills
- Control of cabbage palms in William Beardall Tosohatchee WMA
- Native seed reintroduction experiment
- Scientific support for the OBVM program
Recent Publications and Reports
Peer-Reviewed papers
- Freeman, J.E. and L.B. Trotta. (In press). Priority effects and competitive exclusion by C4 grasses on longleaf pine savanna restoration sites. Restoration Ecology.
- Moreno‐García, P., Freeman, J.E., Campbell, J.W., Broadbent, E.N., Almeyda Zambrano, A.M., Prata, G., de Almeida, D.R., Gilb, S. and Baiser, B. 2023. Plant‐mediated effects of fire and fragmentation drive plant–pollinator interaction β‐diversity in fire‐dependent pine savannas. Oikos, p.e10212.
- Freeman, J., Kobziar, L., Leone, E., and K. Williges. 2019. Drivers of plant functional group richness and beta-diversity in fire-dependent pine savannas. Diversity and Distributions 25(7): 1024 – 1044.
- Freeman, J., Kobziar, L., Rose, E. and W. Cropper. 2017. A critique of the historical-fire-regime concept in conservation. Conservation Biology 31(5): 976-985.
- Freeman, J., Williges, K., Gardner, A., and E. Leone. 2017. Plant functional group composition on restored longleaf pine – wiregrass (Pinus palustris – Aristida stricta) savannas with a history of intensive agriculture. Natural Areas Journal 37(4): 434-456.
Technical reports
Resources
Plant List (Native Florida Species Found In Undisturbed Ecosystems)
The Terrestrial Habitat Plant List, complete with images, includes information such as each species' region, ecosystem type, interesting facts (including edibility, history, medicinal uses, etc), and plant family.
Contact Terrestrial Habitat
Contact information for the FWC's Terrestrial Habitat Research program.