Research Interests and Background
I grew up flipping rocks in the spruce-fir boulderfields, laurel-choked coves, and salamander-dense rainforests of southern Appalachia outside Asheville, North Carolina. As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, I studied biology and creative writing, and spent two years engrossed by the impacts of climate change on the thermal biology and oology of Least Terns. Years of personal migrations between the mountains and coastal plain helped me name my passion for the conservation of birds—a pursuit that informs not only my bent as a researcher and educator, but my poetics.
I’ve monitored birds across the United States—from Texas hill country to the east Chesapeake, Montana’s Bitterroot Valley to the sagebrush and cinder domes of Utah, northern New Mexico—on broad-scale and species-specific projects alike. A North American Banding Council-certified songbird banding trainer, I’m also editor of the organization’s newsletter, Avise. In the seasonal interstices, I’ve moonlighted as a youth environmental educator, ornithological museum preparator, bird atlas project coordinator, and poet-in-residence.
Broadly, I’m an avian and global change ecologist with research interests in movement, behavioral and cognitive plasticity, phenological mismatching, and niche partitioning, to name a few; I’m particularly intrigued by these topics through the lens of disjunct and trailing end populations, irruptive species, boreal communities, and, historically understudied, female birds.
After five years in the field, my priorities as an ecologist are largely centered on the applicability of research for managers and the accessibility of scientific language for the general public.
My Master’s work in the Zuckerberg Lab involves the construction of integrative species distribution models using community science data—eBird, Breeding Bird Survey, Breeding Bird Atlases—to forecast potential range shifts in Upper Great Lakes avian populations under climate change; in addition, we will assess the efficacy of conserved areas in the region to serve as refugia birds and provide tailored conservation recommendations to a suite of state, federal, and private partners.
Education
B.A. Biology | The University of North Carolina – Wilmington | 2019
B.F.A. Creative Writing | The University of North Carolina – Wilmington | 2019
Contact
Email: rebekkah.lablue@wisc.edu
Website: rebekkahleighlablue.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.