Research

Mammalian Bioenergetics

Why do some mammals need more food than others? Why do some nurse their young for days while others for years? My research program addresses these questions using broadly comparative techniques, exploring the influence of body size, environment, diet and evolutionary histories on patterns of animal metabolism and maternal reproductive investment.

Physiological Ecology of Marine Mammals

How do marine mammals make a living in the wild? My research program seeks to learn more about the foraging decisions animals make to acquire energy from their environment, and how they allocate that energy towards maintenance, growth, reproduction and movement. We are interested in understanding how an increasingly altered world impacts these decisions.

The Rise of the Mesopredator

Are mesopredators on track to ascend into ecological dominance? My research program studies the effects that removal of large carnivores such as wolves and puma from ecosystems has on the body size, morphology and diet of medium-sized, mid-ranked mammals that now have access to resources from which they were previously excluded by larger, more dominant competitors (and predators).