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
La Kretz Center postdoctoral researcher Dr. Devon DeRaad plans to use genomic approaches to characterize the genetic diversity and relatedness of scrub-jays throughout the state of California. This includes a…
La Kretz postdoctoral researcher Dr. Joseph Curti is interested in the impacts that anthropogenic stressors have on urban bat species. Urbanization is a major force shaping modern distributions of native…
La Kretz postdoctoral researcher Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot is studying the impacts of air pollution on birds, including effects on behavior, species distributions, and detectability, working in collaboration with the National…
La Kretz postdoctoral researcher Dr. Sarah Helman is investigating the intersecting effects of urbanization, diet and rodenticides on local coyote health, working in collaboration with the National Park Service, the…
La Kretz postdoctoral researcher Dr. Zachary MacDonald is using a combination of whole-genome sequence data and forward-in-time landscape and environmental modelling to predict how changes to habitat suitability, habitat connectivity,…
Restoration of coastal sage scrub communities is important for the conservation of native biodiversity in urban areas of Southern California. A key species of coastal sage scrub, California buckwheat (Eriogonum…
This project aims to determine optimal strategies for conserving endangered Yosemite Toads (Anaxyrus canorus). Populations of Yosemite toads (Anaxyrus canorus), endemic to the Sierra Nevada range in California, plummeted in…
In collaboration with the National Park Service, La Kretz Postdoc Dr. 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 Dr. 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…
La Kretz Center Postdoc Dr. Alex Pivovaroff works on looking at native species response to environmental change throughout the year.
La Kretz postdoc Dr. 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.
This project, led by La Kretz postdoc Dr. 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 Dr. 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 Dr. Alex Pivovaroff studies the physiological mechanisms that control live fuel moisture in our Santa Monica Mountains.
La Kretz Center Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. 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
Published Work 2024 | Global Ecology and Conservation (Vol. 54)
Wildfire smoke impacts the body condition and capture rates of birds in California
Published Work 2024 | Ornithology
Published Work 2022 | Current Biology
Published Work 2022 | Functional Ecology
Published Work 2019 | PNAS December 10, 2019 116 (50) 25179-25185
Survival and competing mortality risks of mountain lions in a major metropolitan area
Published Work 2019 | Biological Conservation
Conserving ecological roles of top predators in isolated mountains
Published Work 2019 | Ecological Applications 00(00):e02029
Plant functional traits predict the drought response of native California plant species
Published Work 2019 | International Journal of Plant Science
The Effect of Ecophysiological Traits on Live Fuel Moisture Content
Published Work 2019 | Fire 2019, 2(2), 28
Invasive annuals respond more negatively to drought than native species
Published Work 2019 | New Phytologist
Published Work 2018 | Restoration Ecology
High N, dry: Experimental nitrogen deposition exacerbates native shrub loss and nonnative plant invasion during extreme drought
Published Work 2017 | Global Change Biology
Published Work 2016 | AoB PLANTS 8: plw011
Published Work 2016 | Proc. R. Soc. B 283 : 20160957
A test of fundamental questions in mimicry theory using long-term datasets
Published Work 2015 | Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 116(3)
