The La Kretz Center postdoctoral fellowship program supports scholars who conduct innovative research that interfaces with the conservation and management agencies that direct and lead California conservation. Our emphasis is on biological conservation, and our postdocs work in any discipline that provides the scientific research critical to the preservation, protection, management, or restoration of at-risk species, environments, or ecological communities in California.
PROJECTS
In collaboration with the National Park Service, La Kretz Postdoc Rachel Blakey is investigating how large wildfires, like the Woolsey fire of 2018, influence the movement and behavior of California's top carnivore: the mountain lion.
La Kretz Postdoc Joscha Beninde is conducting a comparative landscape genomics study to understand how species survive and thrive in urban environments.
The La Kretz Center is partnering with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to generate genomic data to inform species listing decisions under the US Endangered Species Act.
Rapidly changing climate in California and around the world has the potential to cause a mismatch between the environmental conditions that plants are adapted to and the environmental conditions they will face in the future, which threatens the viability of many plant populations. Working with the California endemic species Valley oak (Quercus lobata), La Kretz...
La Kretz Center Postdoc Alex Pivovaroff works on looking at native species response to environmental change throughout the year.
Human activities are dramatically impacting ecosystems worldwide due to air pollution – and resulting changes to climate and nitrogen cycling – and the spread of nonnative plant species. These drivers of global change may have strong and interactive ecological effects, but the evolutionary impacts of these factors are poorly understood. La Kretz postdoc Justin Valliere is currently exploring potential adaptation to nitrogen pollution and climate in common invasive plant species of California. This study will have important implications for invasive plant management under predicted global change.
California’s native ecosystems are increasingly impacted by nitrogen deposition resulting from air pollution, particularly in the greater Los Angeles area. This project, led by La Kretz postdoc Justin Valliere, extends an ongoing collaboration between the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the UCLA, with the goal of understanding the ecological impacts of nitrogen pollution on the severely threatened coastal sage scrub plant community of the Santa Monica Mountains.
UCLA researchers are actively restoring this site with native California grassland plants
La Kretz Postdoc John Benson's work suggests that a new immigrant lion every two to four years is necessary for the Santa Monica Mountains population to remain viable
La Kretz Postdoc Alex Pivovaroff studies the physiological mechanisms that control live fuel moisture in our Santa Monica Mountains.
La Kretz Center Postdoctoral Fellow Gary Bucciarelli works with the National Park Service to study threatened amphibian populations in southern California.
As a La Kretz/Natural History Museum postdoc, Elizabeth Long conducted a comprehensive resurvey of butterflies across the Santa Monica Mountains and Los Angeles
Luke Browne, Jessica W. Wright, Sorel Fitz-Gibbon,Paul F. Gugger, and Victoria L. Sork
Published Work | 2019 | PNAS December 10, 2019 116 (50) 25179-25185
J. Benson, J. Sikich, S. Riley
Published Work | 2019 | Biological Conservation
Benson, J. F., P. J. Mahoney, T. W. Vickers, J. A. Sikich, P. Beier, S. P. D. Riley, H. B. Ernest, and W. M. Boyce
Published Work | 2019 | Ecological Applications 00(00):e02029
Pezner, AK, Pivovaroff AL, Sun W, Sharifi MR, Rundel PW, Seibt U.
Published Work | 2019 | International Journal of Plant Science
Alexandria L. Pivovaroff, Nathan Emery, M. Rasoul Sharifi, Marti Witter, Jon E. Keeley and Philip W. Rundel
Published Work | 2019 | Fire 2019, 2(2), 28
Justin M. Valliere, Evelin B. Escobedo, Gary M. Bucciarelli, M. Rasoul Sharifi and Philip W. Rundel
Published Work | 2019 | New Phytologist
Justin M. Valliere, Susan Balch, Carole Bell, Carlos Contreras, Bridget E. Hilbig
Published Work | 2018 | Restoration Ecology
Justin M. Valliere, Irina C. Irvine, Louis Santiago, Edith B. Allen
Published Work | 2017 | Global Change Biology
Pivovaroff AL, Burlett R, Lavigne B, Cochard H, Santiago LS, Delzon S.
Published Work | 2016 | AoB PLANTS 8: plw011
JF Benson, PJ Mahoney, JA Sikich, LEK Serieys, JP Pollinge , HB Ernest, SPD Riley
Published Work | 2016 | Proc. R. Soc. B 283 : 20160957
J. Benson, J. Sikich, S. Riley
Published Work | 2016 | PLOS ONE
EC Long, KF Edwards, AM Shapiro
Published Work | 2015 | Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 116(3)
