Laura Prugh
- Associate Professor
Research areas
Quantitative multi-species conservation and management; wildlife community ecology; conservation of endangered species and fragmented populations; human-wildlife interactions; noninvasive genetics; predator-prey interactions
B.A. Biology, Earlham College
Ph.D. Wildlife Ecology, University of British Columbia
Courses
- ESRM 150 | Wildlife in the Modern World (5) - Autumn
- ESRM 351 | Wildlife Research Techniques (5) - Spring
Current Sponsored Projects
- imber harvest and the Selkirk Elk: How does forest structure influence predator-prey interactions?
Our proposed research builds off the Washington Predator-Prey Project, a multi-year study mandated by the Washington state legislature to investigate the impact of wolves on ungulates by tracking the movement and survivorship elk, white-tailed deer, and mule deer. We propose to build on this work by conducting vegetation surveys to determine how human modifications of the landscape (i.e., timber harvest, the predominant forest disturbance in the area) influence elk by dually altering forage availability and by influencing predation risk via changes in the habitat structure, with implications for elk management across the West. - Animals on the Move: Remotely Based Determination of Key Drivers Influencing Movements and Habitat Selection of Highly Mobile Fauna Throughout the ABoVE Study Domain
Facilitated by many data-sharing collaborations with US and Canadian government agencies, we will use space-based wildlife tracking technology to build an integrated dataset of regional-scale and near-continuous descriptions of passerine (American robins), raptor (Golden Eagles, ungulate (caribou, moose) and predator (wolf and brown bear) locations with both static and dynamic remote sensing products and other regional-scale geospatial datasets. - Assessing Alpine Ecosystem Productivity to Environmental Change using Dall Sheep as an Iconic Indicator Species
We will: (a) produce times series of snow extent, NDVL, and shrub encroachment though alpine areas of the ABoVE domain, (2) evaluate how these factors affect Dall sheep movement, habitat selection, and population viability, (3) improve a spatially-explicit snowpack evolution model, and (4) relate our improved understanding of alpine ecosystem dynamics to the societal implication of altered sheep harvest. - CAREER: Integrating Positive and Negative Interactions in Carnivore Community Ecology
The goal of this study is to understand how large carnivores affect smaller carnivores through negative interactions (predation, competition) as well as positive interactions (providing food via ungulate carcasses). - Impacts of Tour Boat Shore Excursions on Terrestrial Wildlife Glacier Bay National Park
This project will use non-invasive methods to quantify species occupancy and activity levels to compare between sites used for shore excursions versus those that are not and between days when human use occurs versus days in which no human use occurs at the same site. - Population Dynamics of Forest Carnivores in Denali
The objective of this agreement is to support research that will increase our understanding of factors affecting the distribution and abundance of carnivores in Denali National Park and Preserve. The project will use methods developed previously by the Principal Investigator to track the distribution, abundance, and habitat partitioning among forest carnivores in Denali.
Selected publications
Montgomery, RA, RJ Moll, E Say-Sallaz, M Valeix, LR Prugh. 2019. A tendency to simplify complex systems. Biological Conservation 233: 1-11
Prugh, LR, KJ Sivy, PJ Mahoney, TR Ganz, MA Ditmer, M van de Kerk, SL Gilbert, RA Montgomery. 2019. Designing studies of predation risk for improved inference in carnivore-ungulate systems. Biological Conservation 232: 194-207
Joshua B. Grinath, Nicolas Deguines, Laura R. Prugh, Justin S. Brashares, John Chesnut, and Katharine N. Suding. 2018. Animals alter precipitation legacies: trophic and ecosystem engineering effects on plant community temporal dynamics. Journal of Ecology 106: 1454-1469 doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.12936
Laura R. Prugh, Nicolas Deguines, Joshua B. Grinath, Katherine N. Suding, William T. Bean, Robert Stafford, and Justin S. Brashares. 2018. Ecological winners and losers of extreme drought in California. Nature Climate Change 8: 819-824 doi: 10.1038/s41558-018-0255-1
Sivy, KJ, C Pozzanghera, K Colson, M Mumma, LR Prugh. 2018. Apex predators and the facilitation of resource partitioning among mesopredators. Oikos 127: 607-621 doi: 10.1111/oik.04647