Contributor since Fall 2015
Aaron Grade
Research Area: Conservation and wildlife biology, avian ecology, urban ecology, bioacoustics and animal behavior.
I am interested in how wildlife interacts with natural ecosystems, urban areas, and the built environment. My primary concern is in the conservation of functional ecosystems and biodiversity. The tools that I use to understand these systems are varied, and include methods from disciplines such as: landscape and urban ecology, bioacoustics and animal behavior, population and community ecology. I often use work in the “field”, technology, modeling, and an understanding about animal behavior and ecology to accomplish my research goals. Currently, I am studying how birds (specifically House Wrens) change their nesting strategies under different threats by predators across an urban-to-rural gradient. To accomplish this, I am teaming up with Neighborhood Nestwatch, a citizen science project, to monitor nests in backyards across Western Massachusetts.