B&C Fellow - Hailey Boone

Michigan State University - Fisheries and Wildlife Management, PhD - Projected to Graduate 2024
Project Title: Human Activity Mediates Mammal Local Space Use, Dial Activity, and Interspecies Spatial Interactions.

I am a Ph.D. candidate working on the Isle Royale National Park wolf introduction project. My project focuses on investigating mammal community dynamics and responses to wolves and park visitors. I received my B.S. from Virginia Tech, where my undergraduate research focused on assessing the population and morphology of Madagascar's black forest cats ("fitoaty"). I obtained my M.S. in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at North Carolina State University. For my masters, I studied white-tailed deer fawn survival and population metrics across North Carolina using large-scale remote camera surveys and citizen science. My research interests include carnivore and ungulate ecology and management, predator-prey relationships, human-wildlife conflict and sampling techniques to estimate abundance and movement.

Human Activity Mediates Mammal Local Space Use, Dial Activity, and Interspecies Spatial Interactions

I investigate the influence of increased human activity on Isle Royale National Park's mammal communities' local space use, diel activity, and predator-prey spatial interaction probabilities. I use Covid-19 and post Covid-19 trail camera data to test how or if mammals respond to increased human activity and how that cascades into their relationships with other species. I also investigate the influence of timing and survey design on the precision and consistency when calculating moose population metrics, such as density and age/sex ratios.