“The Wetland Foundation’s support allowed me to travel to the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay to work with a multinational team of biologists surveying wetlands for fish, amphibian and macroinvertebrate species. This work allowed me to gain a wider picture of the drivers of fish colonization to isolated bodies of water, and it became abundantly clear – both quantitatively and qualitatively – that fish were reaching very isolated wetlands in Paraguay through overland movement through flooding (the most common fish encountered was the air-breathing Marbled Eel.) In Paraguay, as with nearly all of my other sites, the presence of fish had significant effects on amphibian assemblage structure despite a high diversity of amphibians with predator-avoiding traits in Paraguayan wetlands. This research will provide important perspective to a number of longstanding ecological questions related to wetland science and the Wetland Foundation’s support was instrumental to accomplishing it.”
