Wendy J. Palen Assistant Professor, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Aquatic Conservation Department of Biological Sciences (B8277) Simon Fraser University 8888 University Drive Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada (778) 782-4063, wpalen AT sfu.ca Postdoc: University of California-Berkeley and Nat’l Ctr for Earth Surface Dynamics (NCED), Integrative Biology, Berkeley, CA Ph.D. 2005: University of Washington, Zoology & School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, Seattle, WA B.A. 1999: University of Virginia, Biology and Environmental Sciences, Charlottesville, VA Current Lab Members Will Atlas - MSc student Will is a Master’s student who comes to us after working with the Alaska Salmon Program at the Univ. of Washington, and is interested in how predators and terrestrial subsidies structure river food webs and affect the growth and survival of juvenile salmonids. Janie Dubman - MSc student Janie is a new Master’s student who has >5 years experience working in the sweltering tropics of Borneo with charismatic hairy things. Janie is interested in tradeoffs between energy development and ecosystem services and conservation. She is learning to love freshwater ecosystems. Amanda Kissel - MSc student Amanda is doing field work to estimate the movement patterns, habitat use, and demographic rates of the highly imperilled Oregon spotted frog, Rana pretiosa, Canada’s most endangered amphibian. She is confronting theories about the best ways to recover this species with demographic and economic modeling. Sacha O’Regan - MSc student (former USRA- 2010) Sacha is working on a project that will tease apart the vulnerability of amphibians to different anthropogenic stressors using life history theory and demographic modeling. She is also heading a project that will expeimentally test hypotheses about life history timing and the interaction of thermal environments with pond hydroperiods. Viorel Popescu - Smith Postdoctoral Fellow (2012-2014) Viorel is working on a new project aimed at estimating the cumulative impacts of small hydropower dams (aka run of river) for species conservation and ecosystem services. He is also committed to habitat and ecosystem conservation in Romania, where he helped start several eNGOs. Maureen Ryan - Smith Postdoctoral Fellow (2011-2013) Mo is working on a large collaborative project aimed at forecasting the vulnerability of montane amphibians to future climate change and how that interacts with the history of trout introductions to alpine lakes. This project will provide an important tool to help guide trout removal efforts for climate resilience. She also teaches at Western Washington University in the interdisciplinary Fairhaven College. Danielle Courcelles - USRA (2010) and research assistant Danielle is one of our macroinvertebrate taxonomy experts in the lab, and has been working on a project aimed at understanding the energy and resource use of juvenile steelhead across watersheds in Northern California. This summer she led a project to extend this framework to the dominant stream predator, Dicamptodon tenebrosus. Jodie McCormick - Undergrad research assistant Jodie is the other half of our crack team of macroinvertebrate taxonomy experts. She has been working on collections from rivers in Northern California for several years and also occasionally joins us in the field. She has also worked as a research assistant on fox populations in Germany and for Environment Canada. Zach Montieth - USRA (2010) and undergrad assistant Zach is estimating demographic rates for stream salamanders in Northern California tributaries and applying them to a matrix modeling framework to ask questions about population sizes and persistence in different ecological contexts. Zach also has been working on a collaborative modeling project looking at Northern Lapwing egg harvest in the Netherlands. Isabell Eischeid - Undergrad research assistant, honours student Isabell has worked on a range of projects in the lab including habitat use by the highly endangered Oregon spotted frogs, and is now completing her honours thesis on run of river dams. Robin Munshaw - USRA (2011) and undergrad research assistant Robin is working on a range of projects in the lab including a project looking at nutrient recycling by top predators in stream food webs. Robin’s USRA project follows up on his experimental data by using simulation models to explore how food web changes in the future may alter stream nutrient cycling. Hannah Gehrels - USRA (2011) Hannah is working on collaborative projects as part of the Oregon spotted frog team, and led a project to evaluate the secondary productivity (emerging aquatic insects) of different wetland habitat-types. Aly Serena - USRA (2011) Aly is working on projects associated with understanding the consequence of climate warming for wetland amphibians, and specifically is evaluating tadpole thermal performance of different species in BC. Undergrad Volunteers Nicole Chin Shadi Jafari-Esfahani Sachini Ariyaratne Ellika Crichton Hannah Gehrels Rylee Murray Lab Alumni Greg Lee - former SFU honours student, and is currently aiming to begin medical school next year. Kathrine Stewart - former SFU honours student, currently working in conservation research in Ethiopia. Beth Nyboer - former SFU lab manager and research assistant, currently NSERC MSc student working on cichlid conservation and fisheries management in Africa. Brett Favaro - former SFU undergrad honors student, currently MSc student at SFU working on reducing bycatch of rockfish in the BC spot prawn fishery. Jessica Ingram - former SFU undergrad honors student, currently working in environmental consulting. Jennifer Jones - former field assistant, currently working in ecological consulting (Adopt-A-Stream Fdn.), WA. Adam Goodwin - former undergrad field assistant, currently working on his MSc at UBC Okanagan, Earth and Environmental Sciences. Ranjan Muthukrishnan - former field assistant, now a PhD candidate UCLA Ecology and Evolution. Jackie Carter - former undergrad honors student, now finishing her MSc at the Univ. of Washington, Alaska Salmon Program. James Stegen - former undergrad field assistant, now a postdoc in ecological bioinformatics at UNC. http://web.ubc.ca/okanagan/ikbarberschool/people/gradstu/eescgrad.htmlhttp://www.ioe.ucla.edu/ctr/staff/Muthukrishnan_Ranjan.htmlhttp://fish.washington.edu/research/schindlerlab/gradstudents.htmlhttp://www.unc.edu/~stegen/index.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3
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