Research Interests
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Avian Conservation: Human disturbance has been shown to influence avian abundance and
diversity, behavioral patterns, and breeding success. Previous studies have illustrated that birds
may alter behaviors in response to disturbance yet display no reduction in
breeding success, and vice versa. These
results suggest that there may be sublethal effects
of breeding in disturbed environments which can only be uncovered through
longer-term research that incorporates measurements of chick health and adult
responses to human disturbance over time.
My current interests lie in observing and quantifying the responses of breeding
cavity-nesting bird species in an effort to understand the trade-offs involved in
living and breeding in a disturbed environment.
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Land Management: I have spent time working in riverine wetlands and the middle
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Biodiversity and Trophic
Cascades: This is a topic to which I am relatively new, but which I would be
interested in pursuing in the future. Because
much work has already been done on the effects of fragmentation, I would like
to look at biodiversity in a new way and believe that trophic
cascades are an efficient and incredibly useful way to do so. This research
looks at explicit relationships between organisms within and between ecosystems
to understand the impact of increasing or reducing population numbers. Although
much of this research has been done in the tropics, I would like to look at trophic cascades along the urban gradient in order to understand
on a new level how human expansion into pristine natural areas is changing the
balance of ecological partnerships (e.g. birds and insects, birds and seeds
(dispersal), insects and plant prey).