The assessment of habitat quality for wild populations requires evaluation of vital rates associated with the use of that habitat. Factors associated with bottom-up (forage) or top-down (predation) regulation and the relative contribution of these processes on ungulate populations are difficult to quantify, especially for a cryptic, but widely distributed...
Commercial whaling during the 20th century drastically reduced many populations of great whales in the Southern Hemisphere. The Antarctic blue whale, for example, is estimated to have been reduced to less than 0.1% of its original abundance based on catch records and population dynamic models. Despite this population bottleneck, several...
Substantial scientific investment has been directed towards understanding factors that influence distribution patterns and animals' remarkable ability for precise orientation and navigation, yet fundamental gaps in our knowledge remain. In my dissertation, I applied emerging genetic technologies to conduct a top-down and bottom-up investigation of animal movement and cue perception....
The critically endangered Maui's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori maui) and the endangered Hector's dolphin (C. h. hectori) are endemic to the coastal waters of New Zealand, where their primary threat is fisheries-related mortality. The Maui's dolphin is among the most critically endangered cetaceans in the world, with its remnant population primarily...
Emerging infectious diseases in wild animals threaten global biodiversity as well as domestic animal and human health. Their unprecedented increase in conjunction with anthropogenically induced range shifts of endemic pathogens exposes hosts to novel parasite combinations, lending urgency to research on disease dynamics in wildlife systems. In natural populations, hosts...