Current Students
Megan Dalton (she/her)
I am currently a master's student in the Davoren Lab studying Atlantic Puffin foraging ecology in Newfoundland. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I first became captivated by birds in high school by helping to monitor raptor nest success with my mom in the west desert and by volunteering at the local aviary. I received my undergraduate degree in Biology at Westminster College and then went on to work for various field monitoring, applied conservation, and habitat restoration projects for the next 16 years in places such as the Western and Central Pacific Oceans, the South Atlantic Ocean, and mainland United States. I especially love small, remote islands and their unique flora and fauna (almost as much as I get motion-sick on my way there) and I reckon that I've had the good fortune of spending over three years cumulatively in these wonderful places. I look forward to more fieldwork on James Island, Newfoundland this coming summer.
I acknowledge that my birthplace of Salt Lake City, Utah is the traditional homeland of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute Tribes. Our field site in Northeastern Newfoundland is the unceded, traditional territory of the Beothuk and the Mi'kmaq.
Sierra Schlief
Hi, I'm Sierra! I'm from Bemidji, MN, and I moved to Canada to complete my Bachelor of Environmental Science at the University of Manitoba. I joined the Davoren lab in the fall of 2023 to start my master's. For my first chapter, I will determine if capelin beach spawning locations have site-specific chemical signatures based on larval capelin otolith microchemistry. My second chapter will examine sand lance otolith signatures to uncover their life-history traits.
Connor Faulkner
I come from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, a small community located along the western Hudson Bay coast, where I am also fortunate to be conducting a portion of my Master’s research. Some personal interests include hunting, fishing, and camping, although fly fishing on the Diane River during the annual downstream Arctic char run definitely tops the list! In the spring of 2021, I graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Environmental Studies Honours degree, where my honours thesis focused on comparing the diets of two sea-run Arctic char stocks within Repulse Bay, Nunavut. Currently, under supervision of Dr. David Yurkowski (DFO) and Dr. Gail Davoren (U of M), my Master’s project is focused on comparing the diets of two spatially distinct stocks of sea-run Arctic char from Rankin Inlet and Naujaat, Nunavut, while further examining how diet influences the colour of char flesh. As my research stems from community-based research priorities, I am ecstatic to work alongside community members to assist in addressing their scientific questions aided by Inuit traditional knowledge.
Katrina Wilcox (they/them)
Katrina is joining the Davoren Lab in fall 2022 after completing a B.Sc. in biology at the University of Winnipeg with an honours thesis focused on the influence of foraging strategies of bird-window collision susceptibility. For their M.Sc., Katrina will be investigating seabird vocalisations at deep water capelin spawning sites on the Newfoundland coast. Katrina is specifically interested in how the use of seabird vocalisations change within social and behavioural contexts.
Kate Vonderbank
I am working towards an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences with a concentration in environmental and integrative physiology. I am fortunate to be doing my honours with the Davoren Lab, which allowed me to spend the summer on the coast of Newfoundland collecting data for my project! I will be examining the quality of capelin and sand lance as prey items for many top predators, by determining their energy densities (cal/g).
Kristina McOmber
I grew up and attended undergrad in California, and started my Master's in May 2022 looking at the pre-breeding behavior and diet of Razorbills and Atlantic Puffins in the north Atlantic. In the past, I have worked with seabirds in the Gulf of Maine, the Bering Sea, and the eastern and central Pacific.
Carolyn Currie (she/her)
I am an undergraduate student in the Davoren Lab, working towards my Bachelor of Science (Honours) with a focus in Ecology and Environmental Biology. I grew up on Treaty 1 and 3 land surrounded by the beauty and complexity of the rivers and lakes, which sparked my interest in aquatic systems. My research for my honours thesis examines primary flight feather moult patterns of Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) using stable isotope methods, under the supervision of Dr. Gail Davoren and Emily Runnells. If I’m not on campus or doing field work, I can probably be found in a canoe or at the pool where I enjoy coaching artistic swimming!
Matthew Legard
Matthew completed his M.Sc. in 2017 at the University of Hull, UK where he studied the effects of personality in captive Gentoo penguins. He then worked as an aquarist at an aquarium, The Deep, before moving to Winnipeg to start a Ph.D. in the Davoren Lab at the start of 2021. He is interested in examining personality in populations of seabirds found in Newfoundland and how this effects things like foraging behaviour and breeding success.
Gibson Rieger
I joined the Davoren Lab in 2021, writing my honours thesis on predation and kleptoparasitism on Atlantic puffins by gulls at a seabird breeding colony. I completed my B.Sc. in Biological Sciences, majoring in Ecology & Environmental Biology with a minor in Microbiology, at the University of Manitoba in February 2023 and began work as an aquatic science technician with Fisheries and Oceans Canada at the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg. Now continuing in the Davoren Lab, I started my M.Sc. in May 2023 looking at the diel behaviour of sand lance and mapping forage fish habitat on the Newfoundland coast.
Leah Pengelly
Leah joined the Davoren lab in September 2020 after completing her B.Sc. Honour at Dalhousie University in 2014 and then working as a biologist in Nunavut. Her Masters research will focus on the soundscape ecology of the Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area, in Nunavut. She will use passive acoustic recordings to determine the amount of noise in the ecosystem from biological, geological, and anthropogenic sources. Leah will incorporate Inuit traditional knowledge and conduct cooperative knowledge production with local communities during her research.
Mikala completed her M.Sc. in fall 2019, which continued the project she started during her B.Sc., investigating humpback whale vocalizations in the Newfoundland region using a hydrophone to passively record on a known capelin spawning site. Her research focused on characterizing the vocalizations and comparing a subset of the repertoire to calls recorded on a Hawaiian breeding ground in the 1980's. After a small break Mikala has rejoined the Davoren lab to do her Ph.D. in collaboration with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Laura M. Bliss
Laura moved from Austin, Texas, USA to Winnipeg, MB in the fall of 2017 to began her Ph.D. Her M.Sc. research focused on using ArcGIS to create predictive habitat suitability maps and to explore habitat patch connectivity and distribution for an uncommon kangaroo rat. She will use her ArcGIS and R skills to predict persistent predator (i.e. seabirds and whales) foraging habitat off the coast of Newfoundland. She will use her people skills to explore the relationship between Newfoundland Traditional Ecological Knowledge and local ecological research. Laura aims to support marine protected area policy and maintenance.
@LauraBlissEco
Emily Runnells (she/her)
A first-generation student of settler origin, originally from the unceded lands of the Pennacook Abanaki, I returned to academia to start my PhD in January 2020. My research is based in the ancestral homeland of the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq, in Northeastern Newfoundland, where I focus on the non-breeding ecology of seabirds, addressing questions about niche overlap of alcids, migratory connectivity of Atlantic Puffins, and carry-over effects and molt energetics of Razorbills (aka Tinker). I previously worked as a Marine Zoologist for the New York Natural Heritage Program and received my M.Sc. from the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, where I studied changes in seabird foraging, forage fish, and plankton community composition in the Salish Sea.
@E_Runnells
Ashley Tripp (she/her)
I am a settler from the Treaty 4 lands of the Haudenosaunee People in southern Ontario. My research examines recruitment dynamics of larval capelin, an important cultural, ecological, and commercial forage fish species in Newfoundland, the unceded ancestral homelands of the Beothuk. My research is interested in factors influencing the Newfoundland and Labrador capelin stock that might be impeding recovery following a population collapse in the early 1990s and exploring connectivity using otolith chemistry in recently hatched fish. While I am wrapping up my Ph.D. program this year, I’m looking forward to starting a post-doc that continues to work with capelin in Newfoundland. When I’m not at the lab bench or in the field I enjoy playing soccer and paper crafting.