Meet the team behind Canid Camera

SUNY-ESF Student Canid Camera Team

None of this could be made possible without the help of the amazing student volunteers at SUNY-ESF. Every semester a new team helps to identify wildlife while moderating, promoting, and up-keeping Canid Camera.

Spring 2019

Jazmyn Toombs, Sophia Bunch, Kass Sutton, Shelby Kemp, Colin Gerlach, Tiffany Donaldson, Craig Henderson, Shannon Croft

Spring 2018

Kass Sutton, Craig Henderson, Melissa Phillips and Jen Campos,

Fall 2018

Past volunteers include Alexander Roukis, Allison Becker, Annarose Quinn, Antoinette Esposito, Christian Chevalier, Emily Olds, Hannah Kowalsky, Jenna Holakovsky, Heather Morris, Hyunjung Lee, Juliana Ofalt, Kristen Tan, Meghan Dwyer, Melissa Phillips, Parker Everhart, Rachel Guerrieri, Reilly Carlson, Shourjya Majumder, Tyler Duby, and Zaynab Taveras.

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Dr. Amanda Cheeseman

Amanda is a mammalogist, conservation biologist, and Postdoctoral Associate at the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) where she oversees Canid Camera. Amanda's research at SUNY-ESF has focused on untangling the interactions between imperiled New England cottontails, their competitors, predators, and habitat. She continues to work toward restoring New England cottontails to New England and New York through habitat management and her ongoing research to improve conservation efforts targeting this and other young forest species.

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Dr. Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan is an assistant professor at SUNY-ESF where he research focuses on wildlife habitat and population management issues.

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Dr. Sadie J. Ryan

Sadie J. Ryan is an Associate Professor of Medical Geography in the Department of Geography
and in the Emerging Pathogens Institute (EPI) at the University of Florida, and PI of the
Quantitative Disease Ecology and Conservation (QDEC) Lab group.
Ryan’s training is in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (BA, Princeton), with an emphasis on
conservation biology, quantitative ecology, and particularly, disease ecology.  Ryan’s PhD work
(UC Berkeley) centered on African buffalo spatial ecology, in their savanna environment, in the
context of an epidemic of Bovine Tuberculosis.  Ryan’s postdoctoral work in Anthropological
Science (Stanford, McGill), Ecology (NCEAS) and Geography (UCSB), launched her
interdisciplinary work looking at the anthropogenic impacts of land use change and conservation
management goals in African parks landscapes, and the role of socioecological systems in
disease transmission in Africa and Latin America. This research continues today, investigating
the multiscale issues of health on and in landscapes, livelihoods, landscape sustainability, parks
management goals, local perceptions, and the interactions between them. Ryan’s lab is home to
multiple projects in ecology at the human interface, spanning socioecological systems of
vectorborne and environmental disease ecology and conservation, from Upstate New York to
the Old and New World tropics.

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Alison Kocek

Alison is a Ph.D. Candidate at SUNY-ESF whose focus is on ornithology and wildlife conservation. Alison's graduate research project looks at the processes by which individuals and populations of tidal marsh sparrows are adjusting to a changing environment with the goal of informing tidal marsh restoration design for these imperiled birds. Alison is also the president of Onondaga Audubon, the local Audubon chapter for Central and Northern New York. Please tag @alibird with any bird-related Canid Camera questions!

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Brian Tanis

Brian is a doctoral candidate at Oregon State University, broadly interested in the evolutionary ecology of mammalian mesopredators. Having previously used camera trapping to study the impacts of wind energy facilities on coyotes and foxes of the Great Plains, Brian’s current research focuses on how dietary ecology impacts the interactions and evolutionary history of the Canid family. Using a variety of metrics obtained from both 36 million-year-old fossils and modern museum specimens, Brian is modeling how dietary plasticity has shaped Canid ecology, lending insight into current issues surrounding human-wildlife interactions.

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Other Collaborators

Scott Silver, Mark Hall, Dr. Chris Whipps