Fish and Wildlife Seminar Series
506 Seminar
Spring 2025
Scheduled for: Fridays 1:30-2:30 pm in TLC029
Jan. 24: Dr. Michael Quist
Dr. Michael Quist is a Professor of Fisheries Management and Assistant Unit Leader of the USGS Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. All his research focuses on answering questions directly applicable to fisheries management, while also addressing basic ecological questions. The impetus for his research emerges from issues and concerns related to native fish conservation and sport fisheries management. He frames his research questions and approaches in a manner that has relevance to the general scientific community and natural resource managers. Although he has interests in all aspects of applied fisheries ecology and management and have conducted research across a diversity of aquatic systems,
Feb. 7: Dr. Jerod Merkle
Dr. Jerod Merkle is an Associate Professor and the Knobloch Professor of Migration Ecology and Conservation in the Department of Zoology and Physiology in the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming, He conducts quantitative research based in fundamental ecology and ecological theory and addresses the needs of wildlife managers and conservation practitioners. He strives to make a lasting impact on the field of wildlife ecology and management. More specifically, he asks scientific questions and develops study designs to uncover novel and exciting aspects of wildlife ecology, co-produces research with his partners that creates reliable knowledge for managing and conserving wildlife and their habitat, provides analytical, scientific, and data support and guidance to his partners, and communicates his findings to researchers, managers, policy makers, and the public.
Feb. 21: Dr. Tim Parker
Dr. Tim Parker is a Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies and Co-Chair of Environmental Studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Tim’s ongoing projects involve cultural evolution in a landscape context, reliability of inference in ecology and evolutionary biology, and responses to climate and disturbance in a semi-arid grassland. He has also worked on projects focused on patterns and processes in avian sexual selection, forest patch area and edge effects on forest songbirds, and avian brood parasitism and nest abandonment. His research often includes undergraduate students in the field work and publishing results in the peer-reviewed literature with him.
March 7: Dr. Christine Parent
Dr. Christine Parent is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Idaho. Her approach is to observe present-day patterns of biodiversity to infer pastevolutionary processes, and to test those processes with manipulative experiments in laboratory populations. She uses field observations, comparative analyses, laboratory experiments, molecular phylogenetics integrated with theoretical modeling. Island systems (natural or experimental) are often the focus of her research attention. Currently her research focuses on how organisms respond when confronted with novel environmental conditions. She has been using two complementary approaches: (1) the study of large-scale spatial and temporal patterns of diversification (mainly using island systems such as oceanic islands, kipukas, and limestone islands), and (2) the study of real-time evolution in experimental systems. She is affiliated with the Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies (IBEST), the Institute for Modeling Collaboration and Innovation (IMCI), and the Center for the Study of Evolution in Action (BEACON) at the University of Idaho.
March 28: Dr. Brad Shaffer
Dr. Brad Shaffer is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Director of the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. His research interests include evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation biology of amphibians and reptiles. His recent research projects include comparative phylogeography of amphibians and reptiles in California and the central U.S., systematics of freshwater turtles and tortoises in Australia, California, and the rest of the globe, and conservation genetics of endangered California amphibians and reptiles. Recently, he has focused on the ecology and genetics of the California tiger salamander, an endangered species native to central California grassland habitat.
April 11: Dr. Briana Abrahms
Dr. Briana Abrahms is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. She is also part of the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels at the University of Washington. Her research integrates global change biology with behavioral and spatial ecology to study the effects of environmental variability and change on vertebrate populations. By bridging theories and methods across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, her research seeks to answer questions that enhance our understanding of and capacity to manage the natural world. Her work combines fieldwork, modeling, and interdisciplinary approaches, centering on three themes: (1) understanding the drivers of large-scale animal movements, (2) linking environmental processes and change to animal behavior, individual fitness, population persistence, and community dynamics, and (3) applying spatial and behavioral ecology to inform wildlife management and conservation.
May 2: Dr. Rachel Cook
Dr. Cook is a large ungulate ecologist whose primary research interests include foraging ecology of large ungulates, modeling habitat-ungulate interactions, assessing nutritional limitations in free-ranging ungulate herds, and evaluating the accuracy and applicability of surrogate techniques used to measure nutrition. Her work focuses the mechanism that links habitat conditions, and habitat change, to the performance of ungulate populations. She has conducted research on a variety of ungulate species, including Rocky Mountain and Roosevelt elk, Shiras moose, mule deer and, in Canada, woodland caribou. She has developed strategies that integrate findings from captive-animal research on physiology, nutrition, and bioenergetics with wild-animal field research to capitalize on the strengths of both. Captive studies involved the largest herd of tame elk in the world in the 1990s and 2000s and, more recently, tame caribou that were used in British Columbia and Ontario. These studies were combined with wild-animal studies across most of the western states (elk) and in British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and Ontario (caribou).
Past Seminar Series
January 29 - Lynne Barre - Branch Chief, Protected Resources Division, West Coast Region NOAA Fisheries | U.S. Department of Commerce. "Saving Southern Resident Orcas"
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February 5 – Karsten Heuer - Bison Reintroduction Project Manager, Banff National Park. “Reintroducing Bison to Banff National Park”
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February 19th – Liba Pejchar (Goldstein) - Associate Professor Dept. of Fish, Wildlife & Conservation Biology, Colorado State University.
“Pacific Islands in peril: restoring birds and seed dispersal in a dynamic world.”
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March 26th – Aletris Neils – Executive Director of Conservation CATalyst. Integrating Ecological and Social Sciences to Foster Human-Carnivore Coexistence: Lessons from Namibia
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April 9th – Kelly Zamudio – Professor Cornell University and Curator Museum of Herpetology. The amphibian-killing fungus in the Neotropics: pathogen virulence, host susceptibility, and frog conservation.
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April 23rd – Dan McNulty – Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University. "Deciphering the trophic effects of large carnivores in wildland food webs"
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May 7th – Jason Dunham – Supervisory Research Ecologist, USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center. "Climate vulnerability of streams and fish: working across scales and disciplines"
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January 24 – Kim Sager-Fradkin – Wildlife Program Manager, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe Natural Resources, Port Angeles, WA. "From American dippers to cougars and from dam removal to subsistence harvest – the diverse wildlife program of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.
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January 31 – Howard Quigley – Executive Director of Conservation Science and Director of the Jaguar Program at Panthera, Palouse, WA. “The making of a range-wide conservation program for an apex carnivore: jaguars as a global example."
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March 6 – Lisa Crozier – Research Scientist, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA Fisheries, Seattle, WA. “Impacts of climate change on Pacific salmon.”
March 27 (CANCELLED) – Phaedra Budy – Unit Leader of the U.S. Geological Society, Utah Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Unit. “Understanding the direct and indirect effects of climate change and disturbance on arctic lake ecosystems.”
April 3 (CANCELLED) – Nalini Nadkarni – Professor, Department of Biology, University of Utah. “Tapestry thinking: Weaving academic knowledge with public engagement to promote forest conservation.”
April 24 (CANCELLED) – Dan MacNulty – Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University. “Deciphering the trophic effects of large carnivores in wildland food webs.”
May 1 (CANCELLED) – Liba Pejchar (Goldstein)– Associate Professor, Department of Fish, Wildlife & Conservation Biology, Colorado State University. “Rare birds and seed dispersal: loss and recovery in the pacific islands.”
January 18 - Hannah Vander Zanden - Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of Florida. "Decoding animal migration and ecology from stable isotope records"
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February 8 - Daniel Schindler - Professor, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington. “From brown water to brown bears: how geomorphic features affect the ecological functioning of landscapes”
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March 22 - Kathryn Cottingham - Professor in Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College. "Cyanobacterial blooms in low nutrient lakes: things we’re learning from blooms happening in unexpected places"
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April 5 - Ed Bowles - Director of Fish Division, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "Opportunities, tensions and sweet spots: pathways to resolve entrenched natural resource conflicts"
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April 12 - David Mattson - Alumnus of the University of Idaho and retired research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Reconceiving Recovery
for Grizzly Bears",
Hosted by the Student Chapter of the Wildlife Society
April 19 - Andrew Rypel - Associate Professor, Fisheries Ecologist, Peter B. Moyle and California Trout Chair in Coldwater Fish Ecology, University of California. "California on the edge: using conservation science to forge a future for native fishes"
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April 26 - Patricia Kennedy - Professor Emeritus, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University. "Novel Ecosystems: Conservation Tool or Cop-out?"
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September 14th - Stephen Blake - Saint Louis University, Department of Biology, "Why would a 600 pound Galapagos tortoise haul itself up and down a volcano every year?"
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October 5th - Tom Newsome - The University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences. "Good or evil: What role for the dingo in Australia?"
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October 12th - Zach Penney - Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission,“Are we asking too much of Columbia Basin salmon?”
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October 26th - Jodi Hilty - President Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, “Yellowstone to Yukon: making the case for large landscape conservation”
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November 2nd - Merav Ben-David - University of Wyoming, “Who pushed the button? Sea ice declines and the energy balance of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea”
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November 9th - Clint Muhlfeld - University of Montana and USGS NRMSC, “Trout in hot water: understanding climate change impacts on aquatic ecosystems in the Northern Rockies”
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November 30th - Lisa Eby - Professor of Aquatic Ecology, University of Montana, "Winners and Losers in Rocky Mountain Streams: Revisiting Sites to Elucidate Impacts of Climate Change"
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February 9th – Scott Mills – Associate Vice President of Research for Global Change and Sustainability, Wildlife Professor University of Montana. “Seasonal camouflage hides animals while revealing possibilities for adapting to climate change”
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February 16th – Cory Williams – Assistant Professor of Biology, Institute of Arctic Biology, Alaska. “Keeping time in the land of the midnight sun: daily and seasonal rhythms of arctic ground squirrels”
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March 30th – Diane Evans Mack – Biologist, Idaho Department of Fish & Game. “Western States Wolverine Conservation Project: establishing a baseline of occupancy and genetics for the U.S. metapopulation”
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April 6th – John Marzluff – Professor of Wildlife Science, University of Washington. “Welcome to Subirdia”
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April 20th – Susan Lingle – Associate Professor, Department of Biology, University of Winnipeg. “When deer fight back: Predator-prey interactions as a window into behavior, ecology and animal minds”
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April 27th - Jonathan Armstrong – Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University. “How fish and wildlife exploit shifting mosaics of habitat: examples from Alaska to Oregon”
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May 4th – Lonnie Gonsalves – Research Ecologist NOAA Maryland. “Making Waves in Ocean and Aquatic Sciences: Lessons Learned from my Early Career Days”
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September 15th – Frances Cassirer - Idaho Fish & Game (MS 1990)
“Wild sheep and pneumonia: the spillover effect”
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October 6th – Melanie Murphy – Univ of Wyoming (BS 1998, MS 2001)
“From genes to landscapes - distribution and connectivity of species in a changing world”
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October 13th – Jeff Copeland – The Wolverine Foundation (BS 1979, MS 1996)
“Social ethology of the wolverine”
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October 20th – Doug Smith – National Park Service (BS 1985)
“The wolves of Yellowstone: The first twenty years”
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November 10th – Steve McMullin – Virginia Tech (BS 1978, MS 1979)
“Science, values and the backfire effect: why scientists need a paradigm shift in communication”
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November 17th – Greg Hayward – US Forest Service (MS 1983, PhD 1989)
“Science delivery and operationalizing conservation in management of federal working lands”
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December 8th – Jim Fredericks – Idaho Fish and Game (MS 1994)
“The importance and challenges of retaining a population level perspective in managing fish and wildlife”
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