This International Women’s Day we look back over the blogs from the last year, and highlight four of our favourites written by women. Celebrate women in science, and the awesome work they’ve done by checking out our favourites below, as well as a brief profile of each of the authors and links to find more of their work.
Tamara Layden
Tamara’s blog post Hidden, but not insignificant – appreciating parasites in stream ecology was one of our favourites this year. A fascinating insight into the lives of parasites, Tamara’s blog will persuade you of the importance of these small and often overlooked creatures.
Tamara (she | they) is an ecologist with over eight years of experience in academia and the nonprofit sector. She currently manages a freshwater ecology lab at Reed College and also serves on the Environmental Professionals of Color leadership team, the Oregon Zoo Community Advocacy Council, and chairs a committee on the Portland Parks & Recreation Advisory Board. Tamara is passionate about supporting ecosystem and community resiliency through scientific research, community development, and social justice and wildlife advocacy. She has a variety of experience in the environmental field and is committed to wildlife conservation and cultivating an inclusive community of scientists, land stewards, and outdoor enthusiasts. Twitter and Instagram handle: @TamaraLayden
Felicie Dhellemes
Felicie’s blog Personality and pace-of-life in free-ranging lemon sharks: a field recipe is a really original blog, and a firm favourite of the year. Felicie presents her study as a recipe, giving you the ingredients and all the steps you need to follow in her footsteps researching lemon shark personality, as well as lots of great photos of sharks and her field site.
On or under the water is where you are most likely to find Félicie Dhellemmes. After a masters in engineering, this young behavioural ecologist spent four years in the Bahamas collecting data for her PhD investigating personality in a coastal shark species: the lemon shark. As a project leader at the Bimini Biological Field Station (www.biminisharklab.com) and the Save our Seas foundation (www.saveourseas.com), Félicie gained extensive field experience and is not scared to get her hands dirty. Some of her most recent work from this project on personality and pace-of-life was featured in our blogs. Her interests are not limited to sharks: She is involved in a project on striped marlin and recently started a post-doc on Northern Pike. She hopes to expand her species range to birds and terrestrial species in the future. Twitter: @FelicieDh (Photo credit: Shin Sirachai Arunrugstichai)
Ana M. Gonzalez
Ana’s blog post A migratory bird’s journey from the Andes of Colombia to North America: Leave early and take it easy or leave late and migrate fast?, another favourite from this year, tells the story of one Swainson’s thrush, Pecas (Freckles). She follows his journey from Colombia all the way to Canada, highlighting the patterns of migration in this species. You can also read her blog in Spanish, here.
Ana was born and raised in the Andean mountains of Colombia. Her passion for birds and migration took her to Canada 13 years ago, where she obtained a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree at the University of Saskatchewan. Currently, Ana is a postdoctoral researcher with Environment and Climate Change Canada @ECCCSciTech and a researcher with the Colombian organization “Selva” @Selvaorgco. She has studied migrants across their full annual cycle in Colombia, Mexico, and North America. In her research, she integrates behavioral and demographic field data with state-of-the-art tracking techniques to provide foundational scientific information needed to support international and local conservation strategies for several Neotropical migrants of conservation concern. Twitter handle: @AnaCardellina. Follow hashtags #MotusWTS (operated by @BirdsCanada) #cienciacriolla to see more.
Friederike Gebert
Friederike’s blog Large mammals at Mount Kilimanjaro: the importance of resource availability and protected areas gives a real insight into the story behind her paper, and what inspired her study. Including some lovely camera trap photos of mammals on Mt Kilimanjaro, it’s definitely one to read!
Friederike studied biology at the University of Freiburg and at the University of Leeds. During her studies, she spent two months at the Bilsa Biological Station, Ecuador, and has been fascinated by tropical entomology ever since. After her diploma on epigeal arthropods, she completed an internship in the Coleoptera Department of the Natural History Museum, London. She did her PhD at the University of Würzburg about mammals and dung beetles on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Currently, she is a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) where she investigates the biodiversity of aquatic and terrestrial insects in Switzerland. Twitter handle: @Freaky_G88. Website: https://www.wsl.ch/de/mitarbeitende/gebertfr.html
Animal Ecology in Focus 