Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation

Fellowship Year: 2009

Academic Background: Dartmouth College - Ph.D. 2011- (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)

Current Position: Post-doc , Wyoming Coop Fish and Wildlife Research Unit

Tom is a postdoctoral researcher in the Wyoming Coop Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming, recently transplanted from the rural woods of New Hampshire where he was a student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology PhD program at Dartmouth College. Tom's research combines population biology, behavioral ecology and conservation to understand why animals migrate, how they cope with changes to their migration routes, and how best to manage migrations to ensure their long-term viability. Before beginning his PhD, he spent a year as a field assistant studying elephant behavior and genetics in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. This experience shaped Tom's Ph.D. course, which was a population-level study of threatened wildebeest migration in Northern Tanzania (the Tarangire Ecosystem, Tanzania). This ongoing project uses a non-invasive photo identification software program (Wild-ID) developed at Dartmouth to individually identify wildebeest by their shoulder stripe patterns. Tom also initiated a collaborative wildebeest GPS collaring effort to help characterize migratory pathways within the Tarangire Ecosystem. As a postdoc, Tom is examining different approaches for collecting and modeling elk, deer and pronghorn population monitoring data, in collaboration with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Expertise: Conservation Science & Biology, Int'l Conservation & Developmt, Natural Resource Management