The Red Lynx Biologist: Imogene Davis Q&A on Southwest Jaguars

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Imogene Davis Q&A on Southwest Jaguars

Check out the following interview of an up and coming wildlife ecologist: Imogene Davis Q&A on Southwest Jaguars blog

1 comment:

swjagsAugust 22, 2014 at 6:24 AM
Imogene was taught by the best!
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I am a postdoctoral fellow (beginning Aug. 1, 2014) at the University of Alberta in Edmonton working with Dr. Stan Boutin and the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, investigating the use of Automatic Recording Units and camera trapping protocols to determine the distribution and abundance of wildlife populations in the province.

I earned my doctorate in Biology from the University of British Columbia Okanagan in June 2013; my doctoral research focused on the behavior, movements, habitat selection, and winter diet and energetics of bobcats (Lynx rufus) in the Flathead National Forest of northwest Montana, with emphasis on the impacts of the bobcat on resident Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) populations.

Research Interests

I focus on how behavioral plasticity among individuals ultimately impacts the population dynamics of specialist and generalist species, with emphasis on populations that live at the periphery of the species' geographic distribution. I am fascinated by peripheral populations, as the individuals in these populations often cope with extreme climatic and habitat conditions that conspecifics at the center of the geographic range do not encounter.

For generalists in peripheral populations, morphological, phenotypic, and behavioral adaptations allow individuals to survive in atypical environments. I am intrigued by the role that plastic behavior in peripheral populations plays in range expansion of species, particularly considering current rates of landscape modification and climate change. In essence, we are creating landscapes that favor plastic generalist species over specialist species, leading to predictable range shifts.