For Black History Month, the British Ecological Society (BES) journals are celebrating the work of Black ecologists from around the world and sharing their stories. This post is from Sandra Klemet-N’Guessan, (@SandraKlemet) a PhD candidate in the Xenopoulos lab, Trent University, Canada, where she studies the role that aquatic animals play in the cycling of nutrients in lakes and streams.

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For Black History Month, the British Ecological Society (BES) journals are celebrating the work of Black ecologists from around the world and sharing their stories. This post is from Jhan Salazar, a PhD student at Washington University.

Hi, I’m Jhan! I’m an Afro-Colombian ecologist, and I’m a PhD student in Jonathan Losos’ Lab at Washington University in St Louis. My research is focused on exploring the effect that temperature and climate have on the ecology and evolution of tropical lizards. I was born in Puerto Tejada, Cauca (Colombia), and unlike many of my peers, the story of why I became an ecologist and evolutionary biologist started long before I went to university or even to school. When I was five years old, I went to the most beautiful place I have ever been: my parents and grandparents’ hometown. In this small town called Boca de Patía, which is also in the Cauca region, I saw for the first time a forest – a tropical rainforest – and met many of its unique inhabitants: snakes, poison dart frogs, and many other fantastic animals and plants. After being there I started watching as many nature documentaries as I could, which made me wonder why none of the scientists on these documentaries looked like me. 

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