M.Sc. Student, University of Alberta (supervisor: Mark Boyce)
Jeremy Banfield is a graduate student at the University of Alberta, supervised by Dr. Mark Boyce. He received his B.Sc in Fisheries and Wildlife Management from Michigan State University in 2009. During the last 2 years of his undergrad Banfield worked as a student biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service in East Lansing, Michigan
Currently, Banfield is examining the foraging behaviour of cougars and how roads and human development might influence that behaviour.
Postdoc, University of Alberta (supervisor: Mark Boyce)
Simone Ciuti is a NSERC-CRD supported post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta. For his MSc and PhD, he studied factors leading to sexual segregation, antipredator strategies and mating tactics of fallow deer, roe deer, mouflon and red deer in Europe. He is now performing research on the behavioural ecology of elk in SW Alberta. In particular, he is currently studying elk movements from the US border to the Livingstone Range using recent developments with GPS radiotelemetry. Dispersal behaviour, behavioural response to hunters and other humans are among the topics currently being studied. To properly assess the human impact on elk behaviour, Simone is performing behavioural observations of elk herds in different areas affected by different degrees of hunting pressure and human disturbance (Waterton Lakes NP, Beauvais Provincial Park, private lands of the Pincher Creek municipal district, Castle Special Management area, Bob Creek provincial park).
For a complete record of Simone Ciuti's publications, click here
Ph.D. student, College of Forestry, Department of Forest Resources, Oregon State University
Cristina Eisenberg is a doctoral candidate in Forestry and Wildlife at Oregon State University. She works as the Research Director on the High Lonesome Ranch in Colorado. Her first book, The Wolf's Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity, was published by Island Press in 2010. She is currently working on her second book for the same publisher, about large carnivores in the West. She is a Boone and Crockett Club Conservation Fellow. Her research interest s include large carnivore conservation on landscapes of multiple human land use, such as ranches.
Eisenberg's objective for the Montane Ecology Project is to investigate how an apex predator (like a wolf) affects aspen communities by influencing abundance and behaviour of large herbivore prey in Waterton Lakes National Park. She will use data from the collars allocated to the Waterton Elk Herd to track elk movements and to examine how wolf-elk dynamics and predation risk may indirectly affect other trophic (food web) levels, such as plants. In her transboundary project, which spans the Canada/US border, she hopes to identify interactions between patterns of wolf activity, predation risk, and elk movements. Eisenberg's study includes factors such as elk vigilance, aspen canopy structure and aspen growth, biodiversity (species richness), and historical elk-wolf numbers. Beyond the scope of her dissertation, she has initiated a fire ecology study in Waterton Lakes National Park with co-investigators Dr. David Hibbs and Dr. Dan Donato, using the elk collar data to elucidate how trophic relationships are influenced by fire.
M.E.Des., University of Calgary (supervisor: Marco Musiani)
(finished November 2008)
Isabelle Laporte graduated from the University of Calgary in November 2008 with a M.E.Des. under the supervision of Dr. Marco Musiani. Her thesis work for the Montane Research Program focused on cattle and elk behavioral responses to wolf visits. Before her graduate studies, Isabelle had completed an Honour B.Sc. in Physical Geography at the University of Montreal. Upon completion of her degree, Isabelle spent summers working on a bio-acoustic research project with the Michigan State University and the University of Montreal. Since November 2008, Isabelle has been working with Natural Resource Canada as a policy analyst in Ottawa.
Postdoc, University of Calgary (supervisor: Marco Musiani)
(finished October 2010)
Allan obtained his Ph.D. in University College Dublin, Ireland in 2008, which was funded by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET). His Ph.D. research focused on applying genetic techniques to study the colonization history of Irish mammals.
Allan has since worked on the conservation and landscape genetics of caribou in the Canadian Rockies, and on the origins of, and hybridization between, red and sika deer in Ireland.
Allan left Ireland for Canada in late 2008 to join Marco Musiani's lab and the Montane Research Program as a postdoctoral researcher. His research was focused on the effects of habitat selection and human disturbances on genetic structure and relatedness in Rocky Mountain elk.
Allan finished his position in October 2010 and is currently a BIOCONSUS fellow in the Mammal Research Institute in Bialowieza, Poland where he is examining landscape genetics and evolutionary history of small mammals, carnivores and ungulates in eastern Europe.
PhD student, University of Alberta (supervisor: Mark Boyce)
Andrea Morehouse is a graduate student at the University of Alberta and is supervised by Mark Boyce. Andrea received her B.Sc. from Tufts University in 2004 with a double major in Biology and Environmental Studies. Upon completion of her degree, Andrea spent several years working on various wildlife projects across the United States and South America. She became a member of the Montane Elk Research Program while working on her M.Sc. degree at the University of Alberta. Andrea's M.Sc. research looked at wolf diet composition in southwestern Alberta; she completed this work in 2010. Andrea's Ph.D. research will examine carnivore-ranching conflicts and will evaluate programs aimed at reducing such conflicts.
Ph.D., University of Calgary, Faculty of Environmental Design (supervisor: Marco Musiani)
(finished September 2010)
Tyler Muhly has a B.Sc. in Biology and Environmental Science from Trent University and a Masters of Environmental Design (M.E.Des.) from the University of Calgary. His Masters thesis examined factors contributing to livestock depredation by wolves in southwest Alberta. While finishing his Masters degree, he was a Research Associate on a major research project in Yellowstone National Park that examined the ecology of bison movement and distribution. After completing his Master's degree he worked for two years as an environmental consultant in Alberta. He contributed to the montane research program as a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary where he was researching the influence of humans on wildlife communities in southwest Alberta. He successfully defended the PhD thesis in September 2010. Currently he is a Rare Animal Scientist for Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures and the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute.
MSc, University of Alberta (supervisor: Mark Boyce)
(finished May 2010)
Joe was a M.Sc. student under Dr. Mark Boyce at the University of Alberta. He successfully defended his thesis in May, 2010, and has since begun his PhD at Colorado State University, working on mule deer movement ecology in response to ongoing natural gas extraction activities in the Piceance Basin of Colorado.
Before coming to the University of Alberta, Joe grew up in rural Vermont, in the United States, obtaining his Bachelor's degree in biology from Bates College in Maine
M.Sc. student, University of Calgary and Conservation Biologist, Anatum Ecological Consulting Ltd.
Dale Paton is a lifelong resident of the Montane in southwest Alberta and is an avid hiker, hunter and fisherman. As an ecological consultant he has completed assessments of bats and birds, ungulate and carnivore monitoring and raptor research for both industry and government agencies.
As part of the Montane Elk Research group, Paton's thesis will investigate elk travel corridors during migration from winter ranges to their summer ranges. Human recreation and industry development often contact these migration routes and may move elk onto private lands. This may cause livestock-elk grazing conflicts, limit genetic exchange between elk herds, or limit the ability of elk to shift natural ranges in response to climate change or disturbance. Results from this thesis will enable provincial wildlife managers and industry to better plan and conserve critical elk seasonal ranges and traditional migratory routes, in connection with industry development.
PhD student, University of Alberta (supervisor: Mark Boyce)
Justin Pitt is a graduate student at the University of Alberta and is supervised by Mark Boyce. Pitt grew up in Iowa as an avid hunter, trapper, and outdoorsman. He completed his B.Sc. degree at Iowa State University in Animal Ecology specializing in wildlife management issues. Pitt worked on a river otter project in Iowa for his undergraduate thesis in collaboration with Dr. William Clark and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Pitt went on to complete an M.Sc. degree at the University of Saskatchewan, supervised by Drs. Francois Messier and Serge Larivière. In collaboration with the Delta Waterfowl Foundation, he worked with raccoons and skunks as well as tackled questions about waterfowl predator population dynamics and spatial ecology. Pitt started his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta in the fall of 2006.
PhD student, University of Calgary (supervisor: Karin Orsel)
Mathieu Pruvot is a veterinarian from France. He graduated as a DVM at the Veterinary College of Toulouse, France. During his last year of Veterinary College, he specialized in the epidemiology and epidemiological surveillance of tropical infectious diseases. During this specialization, he worked on a project on the epidemiology of the Trypanosoma evansi in cattle and buffaloes in Thailand. He completed a M.Sc in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Montpellier, France, and conducted his master research project on the modelling of avian influenza in the University of California, Davis. He is currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, under the supervision of Dr. Karin Orsel (Department of Production Animal Health). Mathieu's project is looking at the effect of the interaction between cattle and elk on the dynamics of important infectious diseases for both wild and domestic ruminants.
M.E.Des., University of Calgary (supervisor: Marco Musiani)
(Past participant: Master's thesis wrapped up at the end of June 2010)
Carly has received her Master's of Environmental Design (Environmental Science) in 2010 under Dr. Marco Musiani at the University of Calgary. Her thesis examined residents' attitudes toward wolves and wolf management in southwestern Alberta. Currently she is working on her PhD at Memorial University in Newfoundland with Dr. Alistair Bath conducting a human dimensions of wildlife project examining human-coyote conflict.
