Frank Jordan

Associate Professor and Chair
Office Monroe Hall, Room 357, Box 025
E-mail: jordan@loyno.edu
Phone: 865-3829
Home Page: http://www.loyno.edu/~jordan/

Curriculum Vitae

Personal sketch

Frank Jordan joined the Department of Biological Sciences in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Florida in 1996.

Teaching and learning

Currently Dr. Jordan teaches Animal Behavior, Biology of Fishes, Biology of Organisms, Biology Service Learning, and Impact of Biology on Society (non-majors). He also teaches Marine Ecology for LUMCON during the summer.

Jordan's philosophy about teaching science is really quite simple—faculty should strive to make their courses both interesting and challenging. He believes that faculty should set high expectations, clearly articulate these expectations, and create a friendly and supportive learning environment that encourages students to go beyond these expectations.  Faculty should engage students in discussions about major concepts, get them into the lab and field early and often to test hypotheses about these concepts, and encourage them to develop written and oral skills necessary to effectively communicate their findings to others. Dr. Jordan believes that the best way to learn about science is by doing science.

Research interests

Jordan is interested in theoretical, empirical, and applied approaches to the study of the ecology of freshwater and estuarine systems, with special emphasis on the biology of arthropods, fishes, and amphibians of wetlands in Florida and Louisiana. He is also interested in developing and evaluating new methods for monitoring and modeling population dynamics of aquatic organisms.

Recent publications

Baber, M. J., K. J. Babbitt, F. Jordan , H. Jelks, and W. M. Kitchens. 2005. Relationships between habitat type, hydrology, predator composition, and distribution of larval anurans in the Florida Everglades. Pages 154-160 in Amphibians and Reptiles: Status and Conservation in Florida . W. E Meshaka, Jr. and K. J. Babbitt (Eds.), Krieger Publishing Company, Malabar , Florida .

Dorazio, R. M., H. L. Jelks, and F. Jordan . 2005. Improving removal-based estimates of abundance by sampling a population of spatially distinct subpopulations. Biometrics online publication 12-May-2005 .

Ruetz, C. R., J. C. Trexler, F. Jordan , W. F. Loftus, and S. A. Perry. 2005. Population dynamics of we tland fishes: spatio-temporal patterns synchronized by hydrological disturbance? Journal of Animal Ecology 74:322-332.

Jordan , F. 2002.  Field and laboratory evaluation of habitat use by rainwater killifish ( Lucania parva ) in the St. Johns River estuary, Florida . Estuaries 25:288-295.

Trexler, J. C., W. F. Loftus, F. Jordan , J. H. Chick, K. L. Kandl, T. C. McElroy, and O. L. Bass, Jr. 2001. Ecological scale and its implications for freshwater fishes in the Florida Everglades. Pages 153-181 in The Everglades , Florida Bay , and Coral Reefs of the Florida Keys : An Ecosystem Sourcebook. J. W. Porter and K. G. Porter (Eds.), CRC Press, Boca Raton , Florida .