College of Agricultural Sciences / Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences
Many congratulations to Lindsay Millward and Dave Pearce, for being recognized by the Oregon Chapter of The Wildlife Society.
Lindsay was awarded the 2026 Advanced Graduate Student Scholarship, while Dave was chosen for the 2026 Outstanding New Graduate Student Scholarship.
These scholarships “recognize students who show strong potential to contribute to the field of wildlife science or management through research, education, outreach, or applied work”.
Dave Pearce
Many congratulations to Sara Murray, who successfully defended her Master’s thesis, entitled “Counting sheep: comparing camera-based mark-resight to fecal DNA mark-recapture for estimating desert bighorn sheep abundance”.
For her thesis, Sara reviewed an astounding 92,000 remotely captured photos to identify individual bighorn. She also collected hundreds of bighorn sheep fecal samples in sweltering desert temperatures.
Read her thesis here: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/q811kt75g
Congratulations, Sara! All the best in your future endeavors!
Paige Minton-Edison was recently featured in the “Humans of OSU” online series for her work in the Epps Population Genetics Laboratory.
Check out her profile here:
https://oregonstate.edu/human/paige-minton-edison
Today the LA Times published an article regarding a proposed solar power installation in the Mojave Desert. Dr. Christina Aiello is quoted in the article, speaking about the challenges the installation would pose to maintaining desert bighorn connectivity.
Congratulations to Robert Spaan on successfully defending his phenomenal Ph.D. dissertation on September 22, 2022. Dr. Spaan’s dissertation is entitled “Characterizing the spread and consequences of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae on bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) in the Northern Basin and Range Ecosystem.“
Dr. Spaan has accepted a position with the U.S. Forest Service.
Congratulations to Christina Aiello for being featured in the National Parks Service’s “Dare to Imagine” series highlighting women with “vision, tenacity, and resilience”!
See her interview at this link.
Congratulations to Dr. Christina Aiello, who was chosen as one of only three Conway Science Fellows for 2019! Christina and Clint will work to better understand the threats facing a desert bighorn sheep metapopulation in California, and develop ways to facilitate collaboration across federal and state agencies to preserve this iconic species.
See the links below for more information.
At this year’s spring Fisheries and Wildlife celebration, Jennifer Nelson was awarded the Thomas G. Scott Achievement Award for all of her hard work as a graduate student and organizing the Willamette Valley Bird Symposium.
Awesome work, Jennifer!!
In collaboration with researchers from the OSU College of Forestry, the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, and the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the Epps Lab is making its first foray into invertebrate genetics!
Read more about the quest to better understand the role of native forest-dwelling insects in the pollination of agricultural crops here.