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!