Matt Falcy, Principal Investigator
My team of scientists and I develop quantitative tools to solve difficult ecological problems. We use math, statistics, and numerical simulations to model fish and wildlife management systems.
I am Assistant Unit Leader of the US Geological Survey's Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Idaho. I am also Assistant Professor of Biometrics at the University of Idaho https://www.uidaho.edu/cnr/faculty/falcy .
I teach a graduate courses on Ecological Modeling and Bayesian Analysis in Ecology.
Jacob Russell, PhD Student
Jacob is co-advised with Prof. Tim Link. Jacob is linking hydrological models of snowpack and subterranean temperature and moisture to the behavior and fitness of pygmy rabbits. Work in Falcy Lab will entail developing dynamic state variable models (AKA stochastic dynamic programming or Markov decision problem) of pygmy rabbit habitat use behaviors that maximize fitness. The modeling will facilitate exploration of fitness consequences under climate change when behaviors are constrained by evolution versus perfectly optimized.
Sam Foster, PhD Student
Sam studies the effects of disturbance on mule deer in British Columbia. He is working with camera trap data, structural equation modeling, and circular distributions of diurnal activity to understand how mule deer respond to complex and changing environments.
Sam in action (9:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCd36Yzk6Dk&ab_channel=TELUSoriginals
Joshua Heishman, MS Student
Joshua is developing a Bayesian integrated population model for burbot in Kootenai River, Idaho. Joshua will estimate (i) density-dependent survival (ii) survival-at-age and (iii) abundance from capture-recapture data using Jolly-Seber open population models. Joshua is also discovering magnitudes of natural reproduction and survival of juveniles released at various locations and ages. Joshua will ultimately project metapopulation growth rates and age compositions to inform sustainable fishery goals for hatchery and natural-origin burbot.
Ryan Vosbigian, Post-MS Research Associate
Ryan is estimating juvenile steelhead survival in the Lower Snake Basin. He is developing Bayesian space-for-time, Cormack-Jolly-Seber models that accommodate complex movement-by-age of steelhead and imperfect detection.
Nate Nadal, MS Student
Nate is analyzing diets of mountain whitefish in the Kootenai River, Idaho. He will develop simulation studies to assess the power of various multivariate statistical procedures to detect change in diet. This work will then inform an empirical study of stomach content species counts from 2000 mountain whitefish collected before and after a large river nutrient addition effort.
Manuel (Manu) Carballo, MS Student
Manu is modeling selenium concentrations in the Kootenai River and associated burbot and white sturgeon. He is developing spatio-temporal models to accommodate inherent autocorrelations in data. He is also conducting an laboratory experiment on the effects of selenium-enriched food on juvenile burbot survival-at-age. Manu will integrate these efforts into an overall toxicological assessment.