Background

I am a first-year master’s student in the Conway Lab. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from NorthwesternUniversity in 2000 with a B.A. in French and Art History. I spent the following year volunteering in Israel, where I worked on a variety of projects, including teaching and tutoring English, working on a banana plantation, improving trails in a national forest, and assisting with mist-netting and data collection for a migratory bird project. This last experience motivated me to pursue a career in ecology, so I went back to school a year later and earned a B.S. in Biology from ClevelandStateUniversity in 2005.

While at ClevelandState, I worked with Dr. B. Michael Walton on the effects of the Red-backed salamander, Plethodon cinereus, on invertebrate community composition in a forest-floor food web. I also studied trophic relationships in two other amphibian species, the Northern dusky (Desmognathus fuscus)and the Northern two-lined salamander (Eurycea bislineata), which occur sympatrically along many Ohio streams.

In the summer of 2004 I had the opportunity to take field courses at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, and it was there that I was first introduced to ornithology. I knew almost immediately that I wanted to study avian ecology in graduate school. During my senior year at ClevelandStateUniversity I workedwith Dr. Dan Petit on an honors thesis investigating waterfowl and wading bird diversity in small wetlands during fall migration. As a recent Midwestern transplant, I am looking forward to studying the ecology of southwestern birds in Arizona.

Research

My master’s thesis research will likely focus on avian-habitat relationships in southwestern desert riparian communities. Riparian woodlands in the southwest comprise less than 1% of the total landscape, but they are disproportionately valuable for both migratory and breeding bird populations, often supporting more abundant and species-rich assemblages compared with adjacent upland habitats. Despite their documented importance for birds, riparian woodlands face a plethora of threats, including groundwater withdrawal. By investigating relationships between hydrology and avian populations, I hope to contribute to local and federal efforts to preserve the physical and biological integrity of southwestern stream ecosystems.

Publications

Sharp, C. C., S. E. Steckler, O. M. Lockhart, and B. M. Walton. 2005. Plethodon

cinereus(Eastern red-backed salamander). Predation. Herpetological Review 36:

296-297.

Walton, B. M., and S. Steckler. 2005. Contrasting effects of salamanders on forest-floor

macro- and mesofauna in laboratory microcosms. Pedobiologia 49:51-60.