I am currently a PhD Candidate in Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where I am a part of the Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit, directed by Dr. Ben Sacks. I also am an affiliate member of the Dr. Chris Schell's Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. My dissertation research explores the impacts of urbanization on wildlife with a population of urban coyotes present in San Francisco.​

CONTEXT

In recent decades, humans and animals have increasingly co-occurred in high densities in urban areas. Although declines in biodiversity are associated with urbanization, numerous species have adjusted to and thrive in cities. The success of urban animals is largely attributed to the expansion of their diet to include human-provided food, resulting in frequent conflicts with people. These conflicts have wide-ranging health, financial, and ecosystem-level consequences, which necessitate a mechanistic understanding of how animals adapt to human resources for better mitigation strategies. Although past research has explored the population-level diet of species in cities, individual differences, mediating mechanisms, and biological consequences are seldom addressed. This presents a novel opportunity to integrate animal behavior, organismal biology, and urban ecology to assess how the built environment shapes the diet of individual animals and elucidate mechanistic links among landscape, diet, and ecophysiology.

methods

DNA METABARCODING​

I use genetic analysis of fecal DNA to examine how coyote diet is impacted by human presence and footprint. I investigate how the diet composition of individual coyotes is influenced by the territory they reside in, demonstrating that within-city variation in the built environment shapes the diet of coyotes.

stable isotopes

I use whiskers from coyotes that die in the city, mostly roadkill, to quantify much human food and protein individuals assimilate. I use stable isotope analysis to investigate the extent of individual dietary specialization in San Francisco coyotes versus those in less urbanized areas in Marin County.

endocrinology

I measure cortisol and thyroid hormones in coyote fecal samples to explore how endocrine function is impacted by dietary variation and environmental contamination, such as lead and mercury pollution.

COLLABORATORS