Courses

ABS 274 Introduction to Wildlife Management

Fall Semester: Undergraduate

Students learn the fundamentals of wildlife conservation and management through lectures, guest speakers, and lab activities. The course is divided into three parts: I. Introduction to conservation, management, and the scientific method, II. Topics of earth, water, fire, and air, and III. Wildlife techniques and field methods. The lecture and lab also include learning the use of telemetry, setting up wildlife cameras in the field, animal capture and immobilization, identifying species based on scat and tracks, creating a resume and cover letter, as well as learning a range of other skills. Ultimately this class is aimed to introduce students to a diversity of topics and generate interest in the field. 

ABS 376 Wildlife Ecology

Spring Semester: Undergraduate

This class explores population biology, conservation genetics, space use and home range, habitat ecology, ecological communities, competition, invasive species, habitat fragmentation and connectivity, disease ecology, ecological restoration, and other related topics. Students practice their writing, discussion, and presentation skills, and develop problem solving and independent thinking abilities. In addition, students work in small groups to design, implement, and complete a field-based research project on the ASU campus.

ABS 476 Large Mammal Habitat Ecology

Fall Semester: Undergraduate

Students learn about conservation and management issues focused on large mammals in North America. Topics include habitat ecology, nutrition, migration, predator-prey dynamics, trophic cascades, habitat management, and restoration of populations. Students also become familiar with the primary literature through readings, class discussions, and completing a research paper. 

ABS 598 Applied Population and Habitat Ecology

Spring Semester: Graduate Level

This class teaches concepts and analytical skills in population and habitat ecology to answer research questions in wildlife conservation. Through lecture, class discussions about research papers, and active learning exercises in R, students learn about circadian activity patterns, AIC model selection, occupancy modeling, species interaction models, population estimation, space use and home ranges, habitat modeling, and resource selection functions. We work with real world data sets from GPS telemetry, wildlife cameras, acoustic bat monitors, and other methods, for a range of different species. The statistical software program R is an integral component of the class.