Kezia Manlove, Ph.D.
Kezia is an associate professor in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University. She is originally trained as a statistician, and did her dissertation work on infectious disease dynamics. Kezia's research questions are motivated by the interface between disease, movement, and behavioral ecology -- in particular, how environmental context and host life-histories shape emergent contact and transmission patterns -- but the tools she uses build heavily on approaches from population modeling and graph theory.
Kezia teaches four grad-level courses:
Since Spring, 2023, Kezia has worked in collaboration with the USDA-APHIS National Wildlife Research Center to help lead a national project conducting targeted surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in free-ranging deer populations.
Kezia teaches four grad-level courses:
- Design and analysis of ecological experiments using R (WILD 6500, every fall)
- Graduate Ecology (WILD 6600, every fall for now)
- Generalized linear and hierarchical models for life scientists (WILD 6520, 1 credit offered every January)
- Movement Ecology (WILD 6900 - Special Topics, 1 credit offered the last week before fall semester begins)
Since Spring, 2023, Kezia has worked in collaboration with the USDA-APHIS National Wildlife Research Center to help lead a national project conducting targeted surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in free-ranging deer populations.
Megan Morrison, M.S., Lab Manager
Megan manages the lab, including all aspects of animal health sampling, all components of our participation in wildlife capture, and all of our data. She is currently leading projects related to documentation of baseline complete blood count data for mule deer and EHD. She holds an M.S. in Wildlife Biology from University of Wisconsin, Madison and has worked with us since the summer of 2023.
Dani Berger, Ph.D. Candidate
Dani is a PhD candidate co-advised by Kezia and Tal Avgar (UBC Okanogan). Dani is studying spatially explicit demography of Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep in a project funded by California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Dani started at USU in the fall of 2020, and joined Kezia's group over the summer of 2022. Dani has strong expertise in modeling both population dynamics and space use, and we are grateful to have her programming and project leadership skillsets to our lab.
Liz Siemion, Ph.D. Candidate
Liz joined our group in the fall of 2022. Her work focuses on understanding the space use of mule deer in the Owens Valley, and how that corresponds to mountain lion space use and predation intensity. Liz has extensive experience working in the eastern Sierra with the California Department of Fish and Game. Liz comes to us with rich expertise in all facets of big game ecology in the eastern Sierra Nevadas, and we are excited to benefit from her real-world insights about predator-prey dynamics over the next few years.
Elsbeth Otto, M.S. Student
Elsbeth joined the lab in fall of 2023. She is using accelerometer data and GPS data to understand fine-scale and coarser-scale behaviors of Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep.
Richard Evans, M.S. Student
Richard joined the lab in fall of 2023 to work on our deer-SCV-2 project. He is using an intensive camera grid to estimate deer density and link it to habitat at our SCV-2 project sites.
Dustin Maloney, Ph.D. Candidate
Dustin is a PhD candidate co-advised by Kezia and Clark Rushing (UGA). Dustin's work focuses on population dynamics of golden eagles, and in particular, emerging threats to golden eagle populations in the Intermountain West including trophic shifts, emerging parasitism and disease risks, habitat loss, and threats from contaminants. Dustin's work is funded by HawkWatch, who are active partners on all facets of his research. Dustin is a deep expert in the ecology of birds of prey, and probably has the strongest wet lab skillset in our group. He is also an exceptional communicator.
Natalie Sharp, B.S., on-site lab manager
Natalie has worked with us since the spring of 2023. She recently completed her B.S. in Wildlife Ecology and Management from USU, and is conducting research on how Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease Virus exposure influences testosterone production in mule deer.
Emily Hugie, B.S., drone pilot
Emily has worked with us since the fall of 2022. She recently completed her B.S. in Wildlife Ecology and Management from USU. She is our drone pilot and is testing methods for using thermal imagery from drones to estimate mule deer group sizes, spacing, and densities.
Carson Rodriguez, Undergraduate research technician
Carson began working with us in spring, 2023. He is currently conducting research to estimate black bear densities from camera grids in the Abajo and La Sals mountain ranges.
Lab Alums
Glenden Taylor, M.S.
Glenden was co-advised by Kezia and Mary Conner. In his thesis project, he estimated cause-specific survival and interactions between proximate and ultimate drivers of mortality in mule deer in eastern CA.
Ian Montgomery, M.S.
Ian's project focused on population drivers in the Zion bighorn herd and the local mule deer population, and he completed. He completed his thesis in the context of a graduate intern position with Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and is now the UDWR district biologist for the Moab/Monticello area.
Lauren Ricci, Ph.D.
Lauren's research is at the interface of movement and disease. During her PhD, she led a project to understand the factors leading to movements with high transmission risk among bighorn sheep, and is our local lab expert on hidden Markov modeling and circuitscape. As a post-doc, she is developing models describing CWD detection using a variety of different kinds of samples. Lauren came to USU from Washington State University, where she worked on Devil Facial Tumor Disease for her masters.
Grete Wilson-Henjum, M.S.
Grete explored movement dynamics in of bighorn sheep in the eastern Mojave desert, and in particular, whether movement ecology of desert bighorns might reduce their vulnerability to severe disease events. Grete came to us from the USGS in Henderson, NV. She was our go-to expert on desert ecology, and in particular, on the challenges faced by bighorns in extremely harsh environments. As of 2023, Grete is a data scientist and logistician with USDA-APHIS-WS
Kylie Sinclair, M.S.
Kylie spearheaded our efforts to understand bighorn sheep population responses in the aftermath of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae introduction events throughout the state of Nevada. Her interests extend across wildlife disease systems. In addition to providing lots of field support at all of our sites, Kylie was also our local expert in Nimble. Prior to her arrival at USU, she worked at the Wyoming Game and Fish lab. As of 2023, Kylie is a Biologist with South Dakota Game Fish and Parks
Toni Proescholdt, M.S.
Toni's research focused around factors driving ewe nursery group formation in one focal bighorn herd. She was our ethological expert, and worked at the Bison Range in Montana with Dr. Jack Hogg. As of fall, 2023, she completing a long-term goal of through-hiking the CDT.
Marcus Blum, Ph.D.
Marcus joined our lab in the spring of 2021. He modeled mule deer space use as it pertains to CWD transmission around the CWD foci in Utah, in collaboration with Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and the USDA.
Melissa Chelak, Ph.D.
Melissa is studying seasonal dynamics of spatial overlap and its implications on disease transmission among Utah's mule deer populations.
