n a t h a n.. b r o w n
Master's Student

Academic advisor: Mark Ritchie

Email: nbrown03@syr.edu
Telephone: 315-443-1693
Office Location: 803 BRL

B.S. in Biology, Dickinson College (Carlisle PA), 2001

Research Interests:

After spending my first year at Syracuse inundated by evolutionary and behavioral theory (it was a good thing, trust me), I drove out to Utah to help a new faculty member in the department on one of his field projects. I am now working for Dr. Ritchie and am currently interested in answering some simple questions about dispersal ability and immigration frequency. My study system is the Utah Prairie dog (Cynomys parvidens), which lives in Southwest Utah. The species is a colonial rodent, their future is uncertain due to habitat fragmentation and habitat destruction. They are listed as a Threatened Species under the Endangered species act and there is a recovery plan, which includes transplanting dogs from private land to refuges on public land.

The entire species ranges over eight counties in SW Utah and I believe constructing a metapopulation model would aid significantly in accurately describing the state of the species and would help when determining future transplant sites. In order to build such a model one needs to know how often individuals disperse (and how far can they go?) and migrate to adjacent colonies. Short of tagging thousands of dogs with microchips that can be tracked by satellites, one can use the degree of genetic variation between individuals of different colonies to determine gene flow rates which can serve as a proxy for immigration frequency. Most of the data I will be collecting will simply be tissue and blood samples for subsequent genetic analysis. This data will significantly aid in building a complete model of their population structure, which will have substantial impacts on their current conservation strategy. In Utah I work with employees and scientists from the Bureau of Land Management and the Utah DWR, which is great as I gain invaluable experience at the interface between the academy and management.