Erica Stuber
Utah State University, UT·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
When people pick a home, both the house and the neighborhood matter. Birds face a similar choice: where a species nests depends on the tree itself and on the surrounding landscape.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
scale of effect
scale-dependence
species-environment relationships
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Characterize the scales of effect, meaning the spatial extents at which species respond to environmental features, for hundreds of North American breeding birds, using multi-scale analyses of a large citizen-science observation database.
- Test prevailing hypotheses about the mechanisms that make scales of effect differ among bird species, using the species-specific estimates produced by the multi-scale analyses.
- Define a scaling algorithm that predicts a bird species' scale of effect, and compile the results in an interactive dashboard for wildlife managers and for future research.
More about the research
For most North American bird species, though, no one knows how large that "neighborhood" is or which of its features matter. Without this knowledge, it is hard to predict where species live now or where they will move as the environment changes. A long-recognized complication is scale-dependence: a pattern seen at one spatial scale may look different at another. Until recently, species–habitat studies have largely set this problem aside.
Why it matters
Wildlife managers often have to decide at what spatial extent to protect or restore habitat. Species-by-species information on the scales at which birds respond to their surroundings could help them direct limited management resources more effectively. It could also improve forecasts of how North American bird species may respond to future environmental change, which in turn informs conservation decisions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Benjamin Zuckerberg
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Test how taxonomic and functional bird diversity relate to 3-D vegetation structure, including vertical and horizontal variation, measured by airborne and spaceborne LiDAR together with bird sighting data.
Marta Jarzyna
Ohio State University, OH·Ecology & Evolution
Test how three-dimensional vegetation structure, including vertical and horizontal variation, relates to the taxonomic and functional diversity of birds. The work combines bird sighting data with airborne and spaceborne LiDAR.
Kristen Ruegg
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Measure migratory connections, genetic variation and survival and reproduction for three declining grassland bird species across their breeding and wintering grounds.
The school
Utah State University: 5 labs on PI Pages, $451M a year on research, 126 research doctorates a year.
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