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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. |
