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Previous Students

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Lesley Bulluck

Professor

Director, Graduate Program in Env Studies

School of Life Sciences and Sustainability

Virginia Commonwealth University

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Dan Allbrecht-Mallinger, collaborator

Assistant Professor

School of Life Sciences and Sustainability

Virginia Commonwealth University

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Cathy Viverette, collaborator

Director of Student Engagement

Rice Rivers Center

Virginia Commonwealth University

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Pete Peterson

Pete is a PhD student studying incubation behavior and phenology in Prothonotary Warblers

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Blake Lamb

Blake is a PhD student studying Golden-winged Warbler post fledging survival and habitat use on private working lands in VA.

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Abby Bressette

Abby is an undergraduate student assessing caterpillar biomass (bird food!) on focal trees when surrounded by varying amounts of nonnative invasive vegetation.

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Jasmine Cuellar

Jasmine is an undergraduate student interested in how nest box temperature influences nestling growth rate and behavior in Prothonotary Warblers.

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Maggie Pletcher

Maggie is an accelerated MS student assessing predictors of annual reproductive success in Prothonotary Warblers and Carolina Chickadees

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Sam's thesis research was titled "Substrate preference and foraging behavior of two declining warblers in Appalachian shrublands"

She is a coastal Biologist with Alabama Audubon

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Samantha Rogers, PhD May 2023

Samantha's dissertation was titled Quantifying insect emergence in tidal freshwaters and the importance of aquatic prey in wetland-dependent songbird diet

She is a Biologist at Dominion Energy

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Adele Balmer, PhD July 2023

Adele's dissertation was on Population Demography of a Neotropical Migratory Songbird in the Face of a Changing Climate.

She is an Asst Prof in residence at UNLV

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Baron Lin, MS May 2021

Baron developed multi-scale occupancy models for Vermivora species (Golden-winged and Blue-winged warblers) in southwest Virginia using a custom land cover classification that accurately represents shrubs.

He is a GIS analyst with Virginia Outdoors Foundation

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Elsa Chen, MS May 2020

Elsa's thesis assessed predictors of female aggression in Prothonotary Warblers. 

She is a wildlife biologist with Colorado State University

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Hannah Coovert, MS August 2019

Hannah's thesis assessed predictors of private landowner intentions to manage for high elevation shrubland habitat in Virginia. 

She is a Senior Consultant - Climate Change at ERM

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Abby Walter, MS August 2019

Abby's thesis assessed sex-specific parental care and home range size in red-headed woodpeckers at Fort AP Hill, VA. She also used GPS tags to track fine scale movements during the breeding season. 
Abby is a data analyst with the USFWS.

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Ben Nickley, MS December 2018

Ben's thesis assessed habitat quality and occupancy dynamics of red-headed woodpecker in a landscape with a complex mosaic of habitats created by timber harvests and prescribed fire at Fort AP Hill.  Ben is President and Ex Dir at Berkshire Bird Observatory​

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Liz Schold, MS May 2018

Liz created an accurate landcover classification that includes shrub cover (something that has not been available) that can be used to assess habitat use and occupancy dynamics in Golden-winged Warblers. 

Liz is currently teaching Biology​​

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Jessie Reese, MS May 2017

Jessie's thesis assessed variation in feather stable Hydrogen isotopes in the wetland-associated Prothonotary Warbler and assessed the degree of migratory connectivity in this species. Jessie is a Research Scientist at Bird Conservancy of the Rockies.​​

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Matt DeSaix, MS May 2018

Matt’s thesis used molecular and bioinformatics tools to understand population genetic structure and migratory connectivity in the Prothonotary Warbler.  He was co-advised by Rodney Dyer and Cathy Viverette.

Matt is now a biologist with USDA-APHIS​

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Jenna Dodson, MS May 2015

Jenna's thesis assessed how spatial and temporal variation in food availability overlap with PROW breeding and influence nestling growth rate. Since graduating, Jenna worked as a Peace Corp volunteer in Senegal and a research associate at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Jenna is a Natural Resource Specialist IV, Texas Soil and Water Conservation.

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Nik Moy, MS May 2015

Nik's thesis assessed the lateral transport of the algal toxin microcystin into the riparian food web. He specifically assessed mayflies, tetragnatha spiders, and PROW of varying age. Nik was co-advised by Paul Bukaveckas. Nik is a Conservation Science Program Manager at National Parks Conservation Association.

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Dan's thesis assessed the role of conspecific attraction in this low density population of Golden-winged Warblers. Dan is an Assistant Professor of Env Studies at VCU and primary collaborator in the lab.​

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Anna Tucker, MS May 2014

Anna's thesis assessed the occurrence and consequences of conspecific brood parasitism in the PROW.  Anna was co-advised by Rodney Dyer. Anna earned her PhD from Auburn University and is an Assistant Professor at Iowa State University and the Iowa Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit.

Previous Undergraduate Researchers

Alyssa Spasic used 13 years of feathers collected from female PROW to assess how environmental conditions during molt correlated with plumage ornamentation. She published her results here.

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Emma Cummings used the long term PROW dataset to look for individual and climatic predictors of female annual reproductive success

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Nikki Novak studied geographic variation in Swainson’s Warbler in collaboration with Garrett Rhyne at LSU

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Valerie Galati was an undergraduate at the University of Richmond and studied geographic variation in crown plumage of golden-winged and blue-winged warblers.  She is also interested in modeling hybrid dynamics.

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Zack Grasso was a post-baccalaureate student and birder/naturalist who has carried out breeding season surveys for Golden-winged Warblers in 2018 and 2019 across several counties in SW Virginia.

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Brooke Goodnow was a post-baccalaureate student and New England transplant. With UROP and Environmental Scholars grants awarded in 2017, Brooke studied the impact of climate change and varying spring phenology on Eastern Bluebirds. 

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MJ Foster was an Environmental Studies (ENVS) student who worked on the PROW crew in 2013 and 2014.  Both years they earned VCU HSURP fellowships. Miran is a coauthor on a paper that assessed the role of female plumage color in PROW 

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Ethan Cox was a Biology Major and Ashley Grupenhoff was a ENVS major and both worked on the PROW project during the 2014 field season.  Ashley also did a senior thesis assessing factors that influence annual variation in PROW reproduction.

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Hannah Huddle was a VCU art student who worked on the PROW project during the 2014 field season.  Check out the cool zine she created as part of a UROP fellowship.

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Wyatt Carpenter was a Environmental Studies and Urban Planning student at VCU and worked on the PROW project during the 2013 field season.  

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Samantha Kay worked on the PROW project in 2012

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Ryan Weaver was active in several aspects of the Bulluck lab, especially in feather reflectance analysis from Panama birds.  He earned his PhD working with Dr. Hill at Auburn University studying coloration and carotenoids and is now faculty at Iowa State University

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Catie Porro and Ben Duke were VCU students and field technicians in the Golden-winged Warbler 2013 field season.

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Alice Besterman worked with the PROW project in 2011 and 2012 where she assessed caterpillar abundance using frass fall. She earned a PhD student at the University of Virginia working with Dr. Pace in the Department of Environmental Sciences and is now an Asst Prof at Towson University

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Laurel Schablein worked on the PROW project in 2011 where she assessed nestling diet.  She also worked on the GWWA project in 2012. She is now a Conservation Coordinator with The Nature Conservancy in the Allegheny Highlands Program.

Prospective Students

Please reach out over email and share your resume. I typically only accept graduate students with at least one full season of avian field experience - either bird ID/point counts and/or bird handling/banding.

Strong writing skills and experience with statistics/R programming language are highly preferred.

Contact
Information

Virginia Commonwealth University

School of Life Sciences and Sustainability

1000 West Cary Street

Richmond, VA 23284

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