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Former Students
Lily Martin
M.S. Ecology
Lily investigated the use of automatic recording devices (ARDs) as an avian and anuran bioacoustic monitoring technique for the National Park Service's Southeast Coast Network (SECN). Specifically she used detections of owls from ARDs deployed across the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, embedded in an urban-suburban matrix north-east of Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. Lily used spatial explicit capture-recapture methods to estimate the population density and the effects of anthropogenic stressors, noise and light pollution, on Barred Owls (Strix varia), Eastern Screech-Owls (Megascops asio), and Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) in a protected area, the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, embedded in an urban-suburban matrix north-east of Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
Heather Abernathy
M.S. Ecology
Heather studied the interactions between regional variation in precipitation and land cover effects on the distributions and abundances of salamanders and migratory birds within the Coweeta LTER. Her goal was to monitor the effects of land use history, precipitation, and isolation on local populations and note how these variables affect species arrangement. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Virginia Tech working with predator-prey dynamics in south Florida.
Paige Barlow (now Ferguson)
Ph.D. Forestry and Natural Resources
Paige was interested in using quantitative models and stakeholder input to make conservation decisions. Her research focused on methods for sampling wildlife populations, hierarchical modeling of ecological processes including observation models, and natural resource decision making under uncertainty and conflicting objectives.
Camille Beasley
M.S. Wildlife Ecology and Management
Camille's research interests centered around how species interact with one another and their environments, and especially how they respond to land-use change. As urbanization poses a huge challenge for wildlife, her research focused on the conversion of forest to suburban and exurban residential developments, and how this affects avian communities. Specifically, she studied a landscape she classified as suspended (or arrested) development, which is where land was cleared for a residential subdivision, but was subsequently abandoned when the housing market crashed. She used this landscape to represent the structural change of urbanization without the human influence, and compared it to forested and residential sites across North Carolina to determine how individual bird and nest predator species respond to different components of the urbanization process.
Erin Cork
M.S. Wildlife Ecology and Management
Erin's research combined knowledge about the gopher frog's natural history with field studies and GIS techniques to address the question, "why here and not there?" in order to build a habitat suitability and hyrdoperiod model which will predict habitat for gopher frogs in southern Georgia.
James Deemy
Ph. D. Forestry and Natural Resources
James is now an Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences and the Environmental Science Program Coordinator at the College of Coastal Georgia. James’ dissertation (co-advised by Prof. Todd C. Rasmussen) assessed storm-based flows that connect wetlands to nearby waters in southwest Georgia. While at UGA, James also completed the Interdisciplinary Certificate in University Teaching and contributed to the development of the Watershed UGA program.
Jack Grider
Ph. D. Forestry and Natural Resources
Jack's dissertation involved developing dynamic distribution models and characterizing roosting habitat for cave-hibernating bats threatened by White-Nose Syndrome in north Georgia, to aid in land use and management decisions.
Kristen Lear
Ph. D. Forestry and Natural Resources
Kristen's dissertation focused on joining the natural and social sciences in an integrative approach to doing conservation. She incorporated both the natural sciences (e.g. understanding the foraging and roosting ecology of bats) as well as the social sciences (e.g. understanding how farmers and rural Mexican communities harvest, manage, and use agaves, and understanding their decision making in regards to agave management) in order to better address conservation needs of the endangered Mexican long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris nivalis) and other bats that pollinate agave plants in Mexico.
Kristen is now the Agave Restoration Program Manager for Bat Conservation International. Check out her website at http://kristenlear.wixsite.com/batconservation
Joanna Hatt
M.S. Wildlife Ecology and Management
Joanna was interested in declining populations and changing distributions of birds and determining optimal conservation strategies for these populations. More specifically, she wanted to determine how changes in global climate might alter timing of emergence of larval insects and the responses of bird communities to such changes. Her master's research focused on the effects of changes to the distribution and timing of larval insects on survival of Black-throated Blue Warbler offspring during the post-fledging period.
Anje Kidd-Weaver
M.S. Wildlife Ecology and Management
Anje's research focused on the movement ecology of American White Ibis across an urbanization gradient. Ibises were captured across a gradient of urban and wetland locations in Palm Beach County, FL and tracked using GPS transmitters. The GPS data from these ibises was used to develop a better understanding of how individuals alter their movement behaviors and habitat preference when using anthropogenic resources (e.g., human foods, urban parks). This project was part of a larger study investigating how living in an urban landscape affects the diets and overall health of the White Ibis.
Cara McElroy
M.S. Ecology
Cara studied the landscape connectivity of two species of frogs in geographically isolated wetlands (GIWs) on a portion of the Dougherty Plain in southwestern Georgia. She examined the effects of landscape features on amphibian abundance, amphibian community composition, and gene flow of the southern leopard frog and the southern cricket frog.
Betsy Kurimo-Beechuk
M.S. Wildlife Ecology and Management
Betsy's research project involved identifying and analyzing the local and landscape variables which affect the abundance and distribution of breeding marsh bird species. Additionally, she captured wild clapper rails and collected biological samples to assess the effects of metal contaminants on bird health within the Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve, located in Jacksonville, Florida.
Tom Prebyl
M.S. Ecology
Tom's research evaluated the effectiveness of remotely-sensed MODIS imagery to monitor deciduous forest phenology and predict effects of temperature variability in the Southern Appalachians. He tested the ability of satellite data to predict phenological events by comparing intensive field observations of canopy and understory spring greenup. Additionally, he used local temperature models and landscape level forest phenology data to test hypotheses regarding the relative influence of winter chilling, spring warming, and topographic variables on the timing spring leaf emergence. Results from this study were used to supplement companion studies on Black-throated Blue Warbler demography in the Southern Appalachians. After completing his master's degree, Tom worked as the lab manager for the spatial ecology laboratory. Tom is working on his PhD at the University of Georgia, with the Georgia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
Cathy Ricketts
M.S. Ecology
Cathy studied habitat selection and reproductive success of King and Clapper Rails in coastal South Carolina. Her research focused on estimating home range size and habitat selection by King and Clapper Rails. Additionally, she investigated factors influencing both reproductive success and nest site selection in the face of trade-offs between conflicting strategies to limit risk to nests from predators and tidal flooding.
Alex Wright
M.S. Ecology
Alex's project investigated the long-term population ecology and large-scale movement patterns of gopher tortoises on large, contiguous areas of high quality habitat, and how habitat and landscape characteristics affect large-scale movement patterns of gopher tortoises in order to assess functional connectivity. Specifically, he conducted a follow up mark-recapture study by re-surveying four study sites with gopher tortoises previously marked between 1995 and 1999 as well as the habitat surrounding the original sites, or “core” areas, as to measure long term dispersal. Alex is currently pursuing a PhD at Michigan State University. He is working to develop network-scale management strategies to maintain amphibian populations in the National Capitol Region of the National Park Service through the use of structured-decision making and hierarchical modeling.
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