A huge congratulations to Katie Tjaden-McClement who recently defended her MSc Thesis !

Katie has worked hard to understand and evaluate large mammal species-interactions in the Chilcotin Plateau region of B.C. Specifically, she investigated whether disturbance mediated apparent competition (DMAC) was the main reason for decline for the Itcha Ilgachuz caribou herd as well as the potential competitive impacts of feral horses on other native ungulates in the region. 

Read Katie’s thesis: here

As a part of a huge collaboration between Dr. Cole Burton, former Wildco postdocs, Dr. Chris Beirne, Dr. Catherine Sun, and Dr. Alys Granados, UBC collaborator Dr. Kaitlyn Gaynor and many others, we recently published a global study that investigated the response of mammals to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic was a tragedy, the associated restrictions in human activity provided a unique experimental opportunity to evaluate changes in animal activity relative to changes in human activity. 

In particular, our research found that the response of wild animals to humans depended on two main factors: (1) their position on the food chain and (2) the level of human development at a particular study site. For example, carnivores were more wary of human presence than herbivores. When compared to their rural counterparts, urban animals seemed to be more tolerant of human activity, often shifting to more nocturnal activity patterns to coexist with human activity. In general, the study highlights the importance of considering the locational context of human activity and species-specific behavioral responses to promote human-wildlife coexistence. 

Read the study: here

Featured news articles: New York Times, CBC, Scientific American, The Conversation

We are absolutely thrilled to share that Dr’s Cheng Chen and Cindy Hurtado both successfully defended their PhDs last Thursday! Cindy and Cheng were some of the original WildCo Lab members, and are the first PhD students to come out of WildCo!

Cheng’s thesis research focused on using a global camera trap dataset to look at the responses of mammal communities to human disturbance and protected areas, and you can check out some of his already published work here: https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12865.

Cindy’s research looked at habitat suitability and landscape connectivity for carnivore species in the dry forest of Peru and Ecuador, with a focus on puma as a potential umbrella species in the system. Check out some of her work estimating habitat suitability for pumas across the area using pre-existing literature here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyac006.

Stay tuned for more to come from both of these incredible researchers!