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!

We study a broad range of wildlife species and are happy to share two recent publications co-authored by WildCo researcher Jacqui Sunderland-Groves on Critically Endangered great apes. As great ape populations continue to decline across their range understanding their basic biology, current distribution and abundance is crucial for planning effective conservation actions. Check out these new publications which provide updated knowledge to support future conservation efforts for two of the rarest great ape subspecies found in Africa and south-east Asia.

Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli) https://doi.org/10.3390/genes14030743

Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus) https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12916

We are so excited to share this paper investigating how human disturbance is affecting predator-prey relationships in Alberta’s boreal forest. We were able to use previously collected camera trap data to assess behavioural responses of prey species, moose (Alces alces), white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and caribou (Rangifer tarandus) in areas with differing levels of industrial disturbance and predation risk. We found that the prey species were more risk-averse in the more disturbed landscape with higher predation risk. This is an important finding given that the caribou in this area area increasingly threatened by disturbance and predation.

This paper was truly a lab effort. It was started at the first WildCo Lab retreat in February of 2020, and involved now past and current undergrad, masters and PhD students, and post-doc researchers from the lab, with our PI Cole Burton leading the charge. We are so happy to have it out in the world and to showcase yet another use of camera trap data!

Where we started:

Where we ended up:

Check out the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9108