Ari Curran, Kai Blurton, and Owen Sansburn all presented findings from their URSA projects at the 2025 Spring Poster Symposium. Nice job all around!

Jim will be working at the Harvard Forest as a Bullard Fellow in fall 2025. He will be expanding ongoing research focused on understanding anthropogenic stressors on blue orchard bee nesting ecology. A full writeup can be found here.

The Forest Animal Ecology Lab was well-represented at the 2025 joint meeting of the Oregon chapter of The Wildlife Society and the Oregon Society of American Foresters. In addition to lab alum Rachel, Megan, Mark, Lauren, Ashley, and Lily all gave fantastic presentations. Mark even won best student presentation award!

Cece wrapped up her thesis work that evaluated Marbled Murrelet foraging ecology and chick provisioning behavior across contrasting ocean conditions. Nicely done!

Rachel successfully defended her Ph.D. work focused on understanding native bee communities within managed forests. Congrats!

Rachel gave a great talk on her dissertation work at the TEDx Corvallis event, helping get the word out about the role that managed forests can play in bee conservation. 

Watch Rachel's TedX Corvallis talk on YouTube.

Rachel and Mark both gave excellent talks on their dissertation research at the annual meeting of the Oregon chapter of The Wildlife Society in Bend, Oregon to standing room only crowds. Nice work!

Four students will be starting graduate degree work in the lab this fall; clockwise from top left: Mark Kerstens, Ethan Woodis, Megan Sampognaro, and Cecelia Frisinger. Mark will continue his Black-backed Woodpecker work as a Ph.D. student, whereas Ethan and Cecelia will start M.S. positions looking at aspects nesting ecology in the Marbled Murrelet. Megan will be starting a M.S. position examining bee communities in recently harvested fire-prone forests of northern California. Welcome!

Mark defended his thesis that focused on vital rates of the the Black-backed Woodpecker in burned and unburned (green) forests in southern Oregon. His work is the first to demonstrate that woodpeckers in green forests have nest and post-fledging survival rates that are nearly identicaly to those in burned areas in the western portion of the woodpecker's range. Nice job, Mark!

Mark won the Les Eberhardt Award for Best Student Presentation at the 2022 meeting of The Oregon Chapter of the Wildlife Society, where he talked about his Black-backed Woodpecker research. Way to go Mark!