Current research interests:
- Population biology, behavioral ecology, and natural history of amphibians and reptiles
- Disturbance dynamics and community ecology of seasonal wetlands
- Restoration of agriculturally impacted wetlands and fire-suppressed sandhill

Betsie B. Rothermel, Ph.D.

Director of Herpetology & Restoration Ecology, Associate Research Biologist

I am a plant ecologist whose research encompass plant ecophysiology, community ecology, and functional ecology. In 2016, I became a post-doctoral fellow at Archbold Biological Station agroecology program and since then was promoted to Assistant Research Biologist. Here, I study the effect of ranching management practices on multiple ecosystem services provided by grasslands and wetlands including plant diversity, and provisioning services. I also assess the success of wetland restoration in multiple wetland restoration easements located at Archbold.
My past research focused on describing, understanding, and predicting patterns of biodiversity at local and regional scales and in response to various environmental gradients and land use changes (e.g., forest fragmentation). I obtained my PhD from the University of Sherbrooke (Québec, Canada) in partnership with Montpellier SupAgro (France). Then, I completed two postdocs at the University of Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens, France) and in the department of Botany at UW-Madison (Wisconsin, USA).
If you are more interested in my research, you can find more information here (https://gsonnier.weebly.com/) and here (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gregory-Sonnier).

Grégory Sonnier, Ph.D.

Assistant Research Biologist

We assessed restoration outcomes in 15 depressional wetlands on a seepage slope on the southern Lake Wales Ridge. Ten study wetlands were hydrologically restored under USDA’s Wetlands Reserve Program. Cattle were fenced out of five restored wetlands, resulting in three treatments: restored-ungrazed, restored-grazed and unrestored-grazed. Pre- and post-restoration monitoring of plant communities allowed us to assess effects of increased water levels and continued grazing.

Water depth, plant species richness, beta diversity, and floristic quality, relative cover of obligate wetland species and facultative upland species

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Plugging off  ditches effectively increased wetland depths in the restored wetlands. Maidencane, a native grass, increased significantly in ungrazed wetlands. Overall, the vegetation responses to restoration were slow and subtle, with desired changes in plant communities only becoming detectable 5 years following restoration. Our results emphasize the need for long-term monitoring to assess success of costly restoration activities. 

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