Title:  M.S. Student

Advisor:  Rachael Orben & Katie Dugger

Biography:  For the past seven years I worked as a biologist at Point Blue Conservation Science in Petaluma, CA. In this role, I studied birds and their habitats across California and in Antarctica. I became particularly interested in seabirds and foraging behavior during a season living in an Adélie penguin colony on Ross Island, Antarctica (https://www.penguinscience.com). My master’s research will explore these themes, contributing to an on-going collaborative effort between Point Blue and OSU. Using video data recorders and biologging tags, I hope to identify detectable foraging behavioral signatures associated with prey type. This information could be a useful tool for exploring the relationship between environmental conditions and individual variability in foraging strategy and could improve our inference of diet composition throughout the Adélie’s habitat.