Bioscience faculty, student researchers attend, present at Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Chapter of The Wildlife Society

Bioscience faculty members Chris Merkord, Michael Aho, and Donna Bruns Stockrahm attended the Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Chapter of The Wildlife Society (TWS) on Feb 12-14, 2018 in St. Cloud, Minn. Seventeen Bioscience research students and members of the MSUM student chapter of TWS also attended the conference and 16 of them presented 7 different posters of their research. Two teams of MSUM students also participated in the Wildlife “Quiz Bowl” where they competed with teams from other universities in Minnesota who also had student chapters of TWS. Iveta Harner, an officer of our MSUM Student Chapter of TWS also attended. The following posters were presented by the student authors:

  • Population control in urban Canada geese in Moorhead, Minnesota: what are the findings after eight years? (Rachel Rusten, Eli Croaker, and Nancy McGray)
  • Impacts of third-year restoration processes on small mammals in a western tallgrass prairie in Clay County, Minnesota (Sarah Sanderson and Miranda Sater)
  • Small mammal occurrences captured by game cameras in fertilized versus unfertilized grassland plots (Tiffany Grieger and Breanna Huynh)
  • Growth rates in painted turtles (Chrysenys picta) in a northern climate in Clay County, Minnesota State University Moorhead (Chase Esslinger)
  • Do painted turtles captured at trapping “hot spots” reflect the population structure of the larger turtle population? (Dylan Leach and Joseph O’Flanagan)
  • Use of game cameras to document urban and rural animal species in the Fargo (ND)-Moorhead (MN) area (Eberardo (Eddie) Barragan and Evan Carlson)
  • Do trapping “hotspots” for western painted turtles remain the same from year-to-year? (Casey Coombs, Megan Gates, Cristiano Ricci, and Dominic Carr)

We also want to thank the MSUM SABC, the Strong Scholars Research Fund, and the Minnesota Chapter of TWS for funding for student travel.