Current Graduate Students
Moe Uili (MS)
“Using acoustic surveys to evaluate the abundance and distribution of manumea, a critically endangered Samoan pigeon”
I am a Fulbright MS student in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology. I hail from Samoa, a small island in the heart of Polynesia. My graduate research is focused on assessing the abundance, distribution and breeding success of the critically endangered Tooth-billed Pigeon or Manumea, a critically endangered bird endemic to the Samoan islands. I aim to closely engage local communities in every aspect of the work to strengthen long term stakeholder support, maintain community sense of ownership of local natural resources management and promote the recognition of science and traditional knowledge in decision making for threatened and endangered species and ecosystem protection. The knowledge and skills gained as an outcome of this work will be used to help establish a long term monitoring protocol for Tooth-billed Pigeon conservation.
Carolyn Coyle (Ph.D.)
“Songbirds as pollinators?: exploring the role of North American birds in flower-foraging”
I am an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and PhD student in the department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology. My interests include avian conservation, ecosystem services, and community outreach through participatory science initiatives (e.g iNaturalist). My graduate research focuses on the role that migratory passerines may play in maintaining plant diversity through pollination both in their western breeding grounds and along the western migratory flyway. Through my PhD, I will collaborate with a network of bird banding stations and use DNA pollen metabarcoding to identify what plant genera are associated with pollen collected from songbirds & hummingbirds. By working towards the formative documentation of passerine pollination networks in North America, I seek to uncover the role of songbirds in pollination systems and to inform conservation efforts in this era of widespread pollinator declines.
Alexandra Badeaux (M.S.)
“The consequences of global change for migratory songbirds: using bird banding to evaluate shifts in phenology and data equity”
I am an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and PhD student in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology. My research interests are currently focused on topics related to human disturbance and their effects on bird communities. I am passionate about increasing accessibility within STEM and I aim to use my research as a platform to promote scientific engagement and education within the communities I work with.
Libby Mojica (Ph.D.)
“Demography and space use of the Ferruginous Hawk to inform range-wide conservation planning”
I am a doctoral student in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology. My interests are in spatial ecology, ornithology (especially raptors!), wildlife management, and wildlife policy. My dissertation will use a collaborative conservation planning approach to understand range-wide patterns of movement and demographic parameters of the Ferruginous Hawk. I plan to use my research to provide reliable science-based decision-support tools that can be integrated across the species range for conservation and management of the species.