Current Members

Eric L Walters

Lab PI / Grand Poobah

Eric directs an amazing team of students and postdocs. His job is to facilitate their success.   CV

Ella DiPetto

PhD Student, Research Fellow

Ella studies metrics of success of living shoreline restoration projects in coastal Virginia.

Oleksii Dubovyk

PhD Student, Fulbright Scholar

Oleksii studies functional rarity in bird communities of North America.

Chi Wei

PhD Student

Chi is studying acorn woodpecker demography and population genetics.

Alex Wright

MS Student

Alex is interested in the effects of urbanization on birds.

Irosh Peiris

MS Student

Irosh will be joining the lab in December 2023.

Rosie Froelich

Research Intern

Rosie assists with acorn woodpecker field studies.

Kaitlin Rivera

Undergraduate Research

Kaitlin is studying the effect of living shorelines on periwinkles.

Lab Alum

Samantha Glover

Former MS student

Sam studied Caribbean king crabs and their use in coral reef restoration. She is the manager of research & development at Oyster Seed Holdings.

Dr. Spencer Schubert

Former Postdoc / PhD student

Spencer studied frugivore mutualism networks. He is currently a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz studying tropical forest ecology.

Grant Bowers

Former MS student

Grant studied bird metacommunities of Chesapeake Bay islands. He is now a PhD student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Dr. Nick Flanders

Former PhD student

Nick studied bird-mistletoe relationships in the mid-Atlantic. He now manages the Blackwater Ecological Preserve for Old Dominion University.

Dr. Natasha Hagemeyer

Former PhD student

Natasha studied dispersal coalitions and population dynamics in acorn woodpeckers. She is head of data science for Agathos.

Dr. Sahas Barve

Former Postdoc

Sahas worked on movement and demographics of acorn woodpeckers. He is now the Director of Avian Ecology at Archbold Biological Station.

Chance Hines

Former MS student

Chance studied energetics of migrant bird stopover sites. He now works as a Research Biologist for the Center for Conservation Biology.

Dr. Vicki Garcia

Former Postdoc

Vicki worked on senescence in 3 species of cooperatively breeding bird species. She now works in Florida for the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

Andrew Arnold

Former MS student

Andrew studied migrant stopover ecology. He now works for the Health Department in Alabama.

Dr. Erin Heller

Former MS student

Erin studied bird-tick interactions and is now an Assistant Professor at Randolph College.

Anna Prinz (Brownson)

Former MS student

Anna studied reproductive skew in acorn woodpeckers. She is now at the Sandhills Ecological Institute.

Annie Coons (Sabo)

Former Lab Manager

Annie used to run our lab and keep us organized. She now oversees two amazing kids.

Collaborators

Dr. Hannah Dugdale

University of Groningen

Hannah has been collaborating with us for > 10 years and has helped develop many of the molecular methods we use in the woodpecker project.

Professor Ben Hatchwell

University of Sheffield

Ben sits on the graduate committee of Chi Wei and shares our interests in the evolution of cooperative breeding and helping behavior.

Dr. Amanda Rodewald

Cornell University

Amanda serves on Oleksii Dubovyk’s graduate committee and shares our interests in the effects of urbanization on avian communities.

Dr. Brian McGill

University of Maine

Brian serves on Oleksii Dubovyk’s graduate committee and shares our interests in functional rarity and other patterns in animal communities.

Dr. Joey Haydock

Gonzaga University

Joey has worked on the woodpecker project since 1992 and conducts all of our parentage analyses and metrics of reproductive skew.

Dr. Dai Shizuka

University of Nebraska

Dai and his research group have been working with us on social network analyses and understanding complex movement patterns.

Dr. Walt Koenig

Cornell University

Walt took over the reins of the woodpecker project in 1974 and continued until his retirement in 2016. He still dabbles in woodpeckers and oaks.

Dr. Holly Gaff

Old Dominion University

Holly has been instrumental in our strong interests in pathogen dynamics and the complex relationships between birds and their tick parasites.