The Blumstein Lab (circa 2023-2024)

Dan Blumstein

Dan Blumstein

PI

Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. Between 2009 and 2016 he was the Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Dan is broadly interested in the evolution of behavior and conservation biology and the integration of behavior into other disciplines. He co-directs the UCLA Evolutionary Medicine Program.

email: marmots@ucla.edu

Katie Adler

Katie Adler

Ph.D. Student

Katie is a member of Team Marmot who is interested in wildlife conservation and understanding how anthropogenic development impacts marmot demography and fitness.

email: katie.adlerr@gmail.com

Taylor Bastian

Taylor Bastian

Ph.D. Student

Taylor is a member of Team Marmot focusing on understanding environmental effects on social behavior and its fitness consequences in marmots.

email: taylor.n.bastian@gmail.com

Pranav Bellur

Pranav Bellur

M.S. Student

Pranav is interested in how feral cats influence avian flight initiation distance.

email: pranav.bellur2001@gmail.com

Jill Carpenter

Jill Carpenter

Ph.D. Student

Jill is a Ph.D. student interested in the roosting and foraging ecology of bats, particularly with regard to how various species navigate and utilize the human-altered landscapes of Southern California.
She’s particularly interested in behavioral responses to anthropogenic noise, light, and other disturbances associated with urban and peri-urban environments. She hopes to combine her robust background in management with the rigor of academia to bridge these disciplines and contribute to evidence-based conservation and management of bats.

email: carpenterj@gmail.com

Nannan Gao

Nannan Gao

Postdoctoral Fellow

Nannan is a postdoctoral fellow developing an international database of urban diversity and research on precise relationships between city size and global biodiversity drivers. She received her Ph.D. in 2018 at Peking University and has continued to work there.

email: gaonannan@pku.edu.cn

Katherine Hernandez

Katherine Hernandez

IoES Ph.D. Student

Katherine is interested in movement behavior in and across human-altered landscapes. She compliments her ecological research with work in environmental narrative.

email: kathyvictoria@gmail.com

Nurit Katz

Nurit Katz

Ph.D. Student

Nurit is a PhD student focused on urban biodiversity and nesting raptors in Los Angeles. She is also the Chief Sustainability Officer for UCLA and an Instructor for UCLA Extension.

More detailed bio: https://www.sustain.ucla.edu/contacts/nurit-katz/

email: nkatz@fm.ucla.edu

Chase Niesner

Chase Niesner

Ph.D. Candidate, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Chase studies multi-species communication and is currently looking at the evolutionary history of "mobbing behavior" in birds. At the IoES he combines ecology and multi-species ethnography, and is a working member of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS).

email: chasealexander1@gmail.com

Eliseo Parra

Eliseo Parra

Ph.D. student & Eugene Cota-Robles Fellow

Eliseo is a Ph. D. student researching fear-and-safety based communication within terrestrial vertebrate communities with varying levels of human-use impact.

Email: parra@neotropicalscience.com

Conner Philson

Conner Philson

Ph.D. Candidate

Conner is Ph.D. student and a member of Team Marmot using social networks to study the social group characteristics that influence marmot fitness and life history

email: cphilson@g.ucla.edu

Xochitl Ortiz Ross

Xochitl Ortiz Ross

Ph.D. Candidate & NSF Predoctoral Fellow

Xochitl is a Ph.D. Candidate and a member of Team Marmot studying the fitness consequences of early-life adversity and its role in shaping individuals’ behavior, social network, and life-history strategies.

Email: xortizross@coa.edu

RoboBadger

RoboBadger

RoboBadger

When not working, RoboBadger can be found poolside at the Chateau Marmont schmoozing with movie stars.

Popular Press: Science News

email: RoboBadger does not answer email.

Chubs Jr.

Chubs Jr.

Chubs Jr. is a more recent addition to the lab. He used to work with Theo Manno, where he relished scaring squirrels. Now he harasses Two Buck Chuck, a lab mascot.

email: Chubs Jr. does not yet have an email account, but you can email Theo

Alumni (including summer RMBL assistants and interns):

Vanessa Alejandro, Allie Anderson, Aimee Artigues, Lisa Barrow, Sarah Batterman, Samantha Beckert, Elen Blesdoe, Malle Carrasco, Kevin Carter, Lawrance Chung, Jessica Chen, Yvonne Chi, Helen Chmura, Leon Chong, Travis Collier, Louise Cooley, Line Cordes, Ondi Crino, Helene Cristofari, Hannah Cross, Esa Crumb, Agata Czerminska, Carrrie De Jesus, Matt De Jong, Alexis Diaz, Alexis Earl, Megan Edic, Rina Fernandez, Eleonora Ferando, Guadalupe Flores, Eliza Foli, Timothee Fouqueray, Holly Fuong, Susie Garity, Sophie Gilbert, Sarah Gilman, Evan Griffith, Jahaziel Guttierez, Sarah Heissenberger, Alex Hettena, Bill Hintz, Laurie Ikuta, Alexandra Jebb, Gina Johnson, Susan Jojola, Patricia Jones, Seth Kapp, Kristina Kataline, Judith Keenen, Carolyn Kelly, Svenja Kroeger, Amanda Lea, Casey Lee, Olivia LeDee, Chunwang Li, Louise Lochhead, Jorge Lopez, Dave Loyst, Mark Luterra, Soyeon Im, RAchel Mady, Adriana Maldonado-Chaparro, Terry Maul, Doug McClain, Dakota McCoy, Sarah McNichols, Anita Montero, Lucas Moyer-Horner, Olivier Munos, Nicole Munoz, Austin Nash, Julia Nelson, Amanda Nicodemus, Gustavo Alacon Nieto, Chiron Otero, Julia Otero, Benison Pang, Elizabeth Palmer, David Pelletier, Kathleen Peshek, Richard Pickins, Findley Ransler, Charlotte Récapet, Andrew Reese, Elizabeth Rhoades, Christian Robstad, Xochitl Ortiz Ross, Jeffrey Roth, Geoffroy Saint Aime, Mona Seymour, Maria Shafer, Erin Shelley, Vivien Shen, Aditya Singh, Tamara Snyder, Jennifer Sojka, Ana Solis, Madi Standen, Tricia Stark, Karissa Tang, Elisa Tarlow, Winnie Tran, Adrienne Turner, Ryan Trojan, Jazmine Uy, Emery Valencia, Tyler Van Fleet, Laure Verneyre, Nitin Vincent, Irene Völlmy, Erin Voss, Kelly Walters, Jessica Whittaker, Dana Williams, Jamie Winternitz, Kwasi Wrensford, Catherine Wu, Wei Jenny Yang, Veronica Yovovich, Xinping Zhang, Claire Zugmeyer.

Eric Abelson

Eric Abelson

Postdoc

Eric Abelson was a UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science Postdoc working with Dan and Seth Riley from the National Park Service. His work sits at the intersection of mammalian conservation biology and wildlife behavior. His recent work has examined the interaction between behavior and extinction risk as well as behavioral impacts of monitoring on capture rates. His postdoctoral research focused on wildlife behavior at roadsides with an eye toward reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions.

He is now a researcher at the University of Texas, Austin.

email: abelson@alumni.stanford.edu

Madelin Andrade

Madelin Andrade

MS

Madelin Andrade is a Master’s student studying avian anti-predator behavior along elevational and latitudinal gradients.

email: msandrade@ucla.edu

Tiffany Armenta

Tiffany Armenta

PhD

Tiffany received her Ph.D. in 2017 and was co-advised by Dan and Bob Wayne. A member of Team Marmot, she used gene expression studies to determine the immunological impact of stress in wild populations.

She is now a Biologist at the US Army Corps of Engineers.

email: tiffany.armenta@gmail.com

Oded Berger-Tal

Oded Berger-Tal

Postdoc

Oded Berger-Tal was a Rothschild and Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at UCLA and the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. His main interest is the integration of behavioral ecology into conservation and management. In his doctoral research he investigated the behavioral response of animals (in particular, animals that have been reintroduced to nature) to novel environments. For his postdoctoral research he investigated ways to encourage natural foraging behaviors in reintroduced California condors.

He is now a faculty member at the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

email: oded.berger.tal@gmail.com

Rachel Blakey

Rachel Blakey

La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science Postdoctoral Fellow

Rachel is a La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science Postdoctoral Fellow working with Dan and Seth Riley on the effects of fire on mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Rachel’s past research has focussed on how disturbance patterns influence the movement, food webs and community assembly of highly mobile predators (bats, owls, raptors) in regions prone to fire and drought. After completing her PhD at University of New South Wales, Australia, she has worked with University of Idaho, University of Missouri and The Institute for Bird Populations.

email: rachelvblakey@gmail.com

Dan Cooper

Dan Cooper

Ph.D. (UCLA Grand Challenge Fellow)

Dan Cooper analyzed geographic associations of breeding birds and plants in the eastern Los Angeles Basin for his Master’s (UC Riverside), and has returned to complete a PhD studying the success of wildlife, particularly birds, in adapting to urbanization and novel habitats. He was co-advised by Pam Yeh.

He’s the founder of Cooper Ecological Consulting.

email: dan@cooperecological.com

Janice Daniel

Janice Daniel

Senior Research Associate

Janice Daniel was a senior research associate who managed the marmot database, worked on team marmot, helped develop JWatcher, and co-authored the JWatcher book. She now is the program manager the UCLA Cal-Teach Program.

email: janice@ucla.edu

Prof. Mario Diaz

Prof. Mario Diaz

Fulbright Scholar

Mario is a Professor in the Spanish Research Council, and is currently a Fulbright visiting scholar to the lab. His main interests are in large-scale geographical and temporal patterns on the effects of urbanization on bird behavior and its ecological causes (and social consequences). General interests are in long-term sustainability of human-made systems, including cities, agricultural landscapes, and managed forests.

More info in https://scholar.google.es/citations?sortby=pubdate&hl=es&user=Yrmj5asAAAAJ&view_op=list_works

Email: mario.diaz@mncn.csic.es

email: rachelvblakey@gmail.com

Megan Edic

Megan Edic

M.S.

Megan is an M.S. student and a member of Team Marmot investigating the variation of female dispersal.

email: meganedic16@gmail.com

Watcharapong Hongjamrassilp

Watcharapong Hongjamrassilp

Ph.D. (Thai Government Fellow)

Watcharapong Hongjamrassilp (aka Win) is a PhD student supported by a fellowship from the Government of Thailand (Development and Promotion of Science and Technology) with broad interests in biology, including the evolution of behavior and morphology, behavioral ecology, and their applications (e.g., to conservation and ecotourism). He received his MS in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD in 2016. His dissertation work will study the mystery of the semiaquatic mass migration of freshwater shrimp in Thailand and the effects of ecotourism on shrimp migration.

email: winbiologist@g.ucla.edu

Lilah Hubbard

Lilah Hubbard

Research Assistant

Lilah Hubbard was a UCLA graduate who was a research assistant and collaborator on Team Marmot.

email: lilahhubb@ucla.edu

Gina Johnson

Gina Johnson

M.S.

Gina was a M.S. student and member of Team Marmot looking at the relationship between the gut microbiome and fitness traits.

email: ginajohnson@ucla.edu

Alex Kirschel

Alex Kirschel

Ph.D.

Alex Kirschel received his Ph.D. in 2008. He was co-advised by Charles Taylor. His dissertation focused on causes and consequences of environmental acoustics on birdsong. He also worked on a project developing acoustic sensor arrays to census avian biodiversity and study behavioral interactions remotely.

He’s currently on the faculty at the University of Cyprus.

Amanda Lea

Amanda Lea

Research Assistant

Amanda Lea was an award-winning honors student and then became a research assistant and collaborator on Team Marmot. She has studied the quantitative genetics of various marmot traits along with questions about both communication networks and the development of antipredator behavior. Recently she’s been working on quantifying MHC variation in marmots.

She was a NSF Graduate Fellow and received her PhD working with Susan Alberts and Jenny Tung at Duke and is now an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt.

email: amandalea7180@gmail.com

Adriana Maldonado-Chaparro

Adriana Maldonado-Chaparro

Ph.D.

Adriana Maldonado-Chaparro received her Ph.D. in 2015. She was a Fullbright Doctoral Fellow from Colombia. Her Masters work focused on capybara population biology and behavior, and her dissertation she studied the consequences of phenotypic plasticity for marmot population dynamics. Side projects explored the consequences of marmot social relationships.

She was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology at Konstanz, Germany and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia.

email: maldonado.aa@gmail.com

Julien Martin

Julien Martin

Postdoc

Julien Martin was a FQRNT Postdoctoral Fellow from Quebec who went onto a Marie Curie Fellowship and then Lectureship at the University of Aberdeen. As a doctoral student he’s collaborated with us on studies of heritability of a variety of traits (in addition to doing is own dissertation work on reproductive strategies of ungulates). For his postdoctoral research he studied evolutionary dynamics and selection in marmots.

He is now an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa.

email: julien.martin@uottawa.ca

https://juliengamartin.github.io/

Ryan Martinson

Ryan Martinson

Evolutionary Medicine M.S.

Ryan is studying sociality and longevity in humans.

email: ryanmartinson@ucla.edu

Peter Mikula

Peter Mikula

Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow

Peter Mikula is a postdoctoral fellow at Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Czech Republic, currently visiting lab as a Fulbright visiting scholar. He is mainly interested in bird behavior from macroevolutionary and macroecological perspective, urban ecology and biodiversity, conservation culturomics and iEcology.

More information: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter-Mikula-2.

Email: petomikula158@gmail.com

Alyssa Morgan

Alyssa Morgan

M.S.

Alyssa Morgan was a Master’s student and member of Team Marmot. She studied the effect of human impacts on marmot behavior and population biology.

email: amorgan@poets.whittier.edu

Raquel Monclús

Raquel Monclús

Postdoc

Raquel Monclús was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow from Spain and is now a lecturer at the University of Madrid. Her doctoral thesis dealt with behavioral and physiological responses of European rabbits to predators. She studied the fitness consequences of antipredator behavior, and a number of questions about maternal effects in yellow-bellied marmots.

She is an Associate Professor at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord

email: raquel.monclus@uam.es

http://www.behavecol.es/en/people/raquel-monclus~5

Nicole Munoz

Nicole Munoz

Ph.D.

Nicole Munoz received her Ph.D. in 2015. She was an NSF Fellow who studied the conditions under which animals should integrate stimuli from different modalities. She evaluated key predictions of her model by studying yellow-bellied marmot risk assessment.

She now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

email: nemunoz@ucla.edu

Chloe Nouzille

Chloe Nouzille

M.S.

Chloe received her M.S. working with Dr. Blumstein and Dr. Seth Riley in conjunction with the National Park Service. She studied
post-Woolsey Fire recovery of wildlife and recolonization in the Simi Hills and Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

email: cmnouzille@gmail.com

Lucretia Olson

Lucretia Olson

Ph.D.

Lucretia Olson received her Ph.D. in 2009 studying the evolution and maintenance of male coalitionary behavior and male marmot reproductive strategies.

She is a researcher at the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missolua, Montana.

email: lucretia@ucla.edu

Megan Owen

Megan Owen

Ph.D.

Megan Owen received her PhD in 2014. Her dissertation focused on giant pandas behavior.

She is the Corporate Director of Wildlife Conservation Science, Endowed Benirschke Chair at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

email: mowen@sandiegozoo.org

Matt Petelle

Matt Petelle

Ph.D.

Matt Petelle received his PhD in 2014. His dissertation focused on explaining personality variation in marmots.

He is currently a research scientist at the San Diego Zoo Conservation Alliance.

email: matthew.petelle@gmail.com

Gabriela Pinho

Gabriela Pinho

Ph.D. (Brazilian Science Without Borders Ph.D. Fellow)

Co-advised by Dan and Bob Wayne Gabi was a member of Team Marmot taking leadership of the marmot genome project and focusing on epigenetics.

email: gabriela.m.pinho@gmail.com

Kim Pollard

Kim Pollard

Ph.D.

Kim Pollard received her Ph.D. in 2009 studying causes and consequences of sociality. Empirical work focused on the evolution of individually specific alarm calls in sciurid rodents.

She is a researcher at the US Army Research Laboratory in Maryland studying acoustic attributes that affect human communciation.

email: kpollard@ucla.edu

http://www.kimberlypollard.com/

Bree Putman

Bree Putman

NSF Postdoc

Working with Dan Blumstein and Greg Pauly of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. She studied the evolution of antipredator behavior and how fear responses can inform us on how animals might respond to novel human-induced threats such as urbanization. She previously studied the predator-prey relationship between California ground squirrels and rattlesnakes. Her postdoc research quantified reptile responses to urbanization in Southern California and determine which biological traits associate with different lizard species’ sensitivities (e.g., being urban-tolerant vs. urban-intolerant).

She is now an Assistant Professor at California State University San Bernadino.

email: putman.bree@gmail.com

Max Ringler

Max Ringler

Erwin-Schrödinger Postdoc

Max is investigating the apparent paradox of (missing) amphibian social organization – while some form of social organization occurs in fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, virtually nothing has been described in amphibians so far, although amphibians feature many building blocks of social cognition. His study species is the “non-poisonous poison frog” Allobates femoralis, which he and his wife Eva are following in natural, and semi-natural, controlled populations in French Guiana, as well as in captivity at home in Vienna. His research at UCLA mainly focuses on call characteristics, calling activity and group communication in collaboration with Dan, Peter Narins, and Charles Taylor.

email: max.ringler@univie.ac.at

Mackenzie Scurka

Mackenzie Scurka

M.S.

Mackenzie was a M.S. student and member of Team Marmot who studied the heritability of behavioral traits in wild marmot populations.

Email: scurkamackenzie@gmail.com

Zachary Schakner

Zachary Schakner

Ph.D.

Zachary Schakner was an NSF Fellow and received his Ph.D. in 2016 studying wildlife-human conflict. Empirical work focused on California Sea Lions and he evaluated fear conditioning techniques to reduce negative interactions with the sport-fishing industry.

He now works for NOAA Fisheries.

email: zschakner@ucla.edu

Brian Smith

Brian Smith

Ph.D.

Brian Smith received his Ph.D. in 2008 studying the fitness consequences of individuality in animals. Empirical work focused on behavioral syndromes in guppies.

He now lives in the Baltimore area where he works for the state goverment.

email: smithbr@ucla.edu

Jennifer Smith

Jennifer Smith

Postdoc

Jennifer Smith was a Center for Society and Genetics Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA and is now an Associate Professor at Mills College. Her marmot work studies the influences of maternal effects on the condition, behavior and fitness of marmots.

She is an Associate Professor at Mills College.

email: smith.jennifer.elaine@gmail.com

http://www.jenniferelainesmith.com/

Ana Solis

Ana Solis

Research Asistant

Ana is a UCLA graduate who is a research assistant and collaborator on Team Marmot.

email: anasolis22@ucla.edu

Kenta Uchida

Kenta Uchida

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow

Kenta is a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow and member of Team Marmot studying mechanisms underlying human impacts on wildlife. In particular, he is interested in effect of habituation to humans on antipredator behaviors and survival.

email: k.uchida@ees.hokudai.ac.jp

Maddy Uetrecht

Maddy Uetrecht

M.S.

Maddy is a M.S. student studying the impacts of human recreation and ecotourism on wildlife.

email: mruetrecht@gmail.com

Tina Wey

Tina Wey

Ph.D.

Tina Wey received her Ph.D. in 2011. A member of Team Marmot, she pioneered the use of social network statistics to study marmot sociality.

She is a researcher in Montreal.

email: tina.wey@gmail.com

https://sites.google.com/site/tinawey/

Dana Williams

Dana Williams

Ph.D. (NSF Predoctoral Fellow)

Dana is a Ph.D. student, a member of Team Marmot, and studies innovation, learning, and social transmission in yellow-bellied marmots.

email: dmwilliams@ucla.edu

Lijie Yin

Lijie Yin

Visiting scholar

Lijie Yin is a visiting scholar from Peking University. Lijie is interested in behavioral ecology and conservation biology and has spent the past 15 years studying white-headed leaf monkeys in China. While in the US, she will join Team Marmot and discover the wonders of terrestrial ground squirrels.

email: ljyin@pku.edu.cn

Veronica

Veronica

And, if you become a mamoteer, look what you have to look forward to. Here‘s Veronica in a (ahem) more recent job studying wolves and what they eat...yes, she’s in the elk! Following this episode, she received a Ph.D. at the University of California Santa Cruz studying mountain lions.