What We Do

Our research centers around 4 major themes:

Conservation Genetics

Application of genetic analysis to address questions in wildlife conservation. Although the term "conservation genetics" is most often applied to threatened and endangered species, we address conservation in a broader context. Our research takes advantage of the pristine nature of Alaska's habitats to describe population processes under natural or near-natural conditions and assesses impacts of change occurring in landscapes altered through development, resource extraction, or climate change.

Landscape Genetics

Combining population genetics and landscape ecology to determine how variation in the distribution of genetic characters is influenced by the structure of the environment.

Phylogeography

We analyze genetic diversity of present-day populations to infer their demographic history. We also are developing the capacity to examine historic diversity through ancient DNA techniques.

Population Ecology of Large Mammals

This can be a catch-all category but thus far our work has focused on the question: How does habitat selection influence fitness?