My research so far has focused on birds and mammals, however I'd love to expand and participate in research beyond these wonderful taxa. Below is a summary of my research experiences.
In the field...
Past Research Projects
Additional skills
- Nevada
- Pershing County: Nighttime telemetry of Townsend's Big-eared bat
- White Pine County: Rose Guano Cave Tadarida colony monitoring & nearby wind farm monitoring using thermal video recording and marine-grade radar
- Multiple locations: Internal and external mine surveys
- Virginia
- Southeast Virginia: Thesis research (Roosting affinities of Rafinesque's big eared bat Corynorhinus rafinesquii)
- I used dataloggers to measure and compare temperatures of several maternity roosts and hibernacula
- Collaborated with Bat Conservation International on several roost restoration projects to stabilize buildings being used as maternity roosts
- Documented first known hibernacula of this species in Virginia
- Barrier Islands: Red Knots (Calidris canutus rufa)
- I assisted with cannon-netting, aerial telemetry, behavioral observations, and prey sampling of these shorebirds as they migrated through the area.
- Southeast Virginia: Thesis research (Roosting affinities of Rafinesque's big eared bat Corynorhinus rafinesquii)
- Maryland
- Baltimore Ecosystem Study
- Over five years of conducting bird point counts at 130+ points, as part of BES' long term bird monitoring project
- Bird Monitoring Synthesis: I'm working with colleagues on data analysis of over 10 years of bird data to investigate what long-term patterns might be present in Baltimore's bird community.
- Dissertation
- Investigating Predictors of Bat Activity & Species Richness in Baltimore, MD
- I used active and passive acoustic monitoring to document bat species presence and activity levels at vacant lots, small informal greenspaces whose use by wildlife hasn't been studied much
- Baltimore Ecosystem Study
- Missouri
- Forest Service/University of Missouri
- White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) treatment monitoring: For several months I helped weigh, feed, hydrate, and assess body condition and extent of white-nose syndrome for bats that were part of a captive study on WNS treatments in Columbia, Missouri. The bats were later released back into the wild
- Occasional mistnet and harp trap surveys around Missouri
- Forest Service/University of Missouri
- Remote
- Using digital photos taken by colleagues, I calculated the roosting density of a Geoffroy’s rosette fruit bat (Rousettus amplexicaudatus) colony in Davao del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines. It is believed to be one of the largest bat colonies in the world. Paper is here: Photographic density estimation of a Rousettus bat colony
- Urbionet Working Group
- I assisted with literature review and gathering datasets on urban wildlife as part of this working group within Urbionet. An international group of colleagues and I are currently preparing a paper on global trends seen in different taxa in urban studies.
- Coauthored a paper on the future of urban biodiversity research: A Research Agenda for Urban Biodiversity in the Global Extinction Crisis
Additional skills
- Small mammal trapping
- Museum skin preparation (birds and mammals)
- Camera trapping
- Software experience: ArcMap, R, RStudio, PC-ORD, Microsoft Office