Animal Behavior Graduate Group: "To the field and back again: a story of sociality, health, environment and survival in a changing world"

Rosemary Blersch, UC Davis, presents "To the field and back again: a story of sociality, health, environment and survival in a changing world".

Rosemary Blersch is a quantitative behavioural ecologist with research interests that fall at the intersection of health, social behaviour and the environment in non-human primates. At the University of Lethbridge (Canada), their PhD research focused on primate-parasite interactions in a semi-arid environment with a particular interest in how environmental stress may limit behavioural flexibility in response to infection. Blersch is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Davis working under Professor Brenda McCowan. Their research covers bio-behavioural complexity and welfare, and combines behavioural observations, physiological health and environmental data with advanced analytical techniques. They concentrate on the environmental and social drivers of social complexity and instability, and the impact that position in the social group has on individual health. Blersch’s interests lie in both how these interactions play out in a more controlled, captive environment, as well as how, in wild populations, competing stressors may limit the ability of primates to modulate their behaviour in response to underlying physiological processes.

Host: Dr. Brenda McCowan (bjmccowan@ucdavis.edu)

Enrollment — Graduates: ANB 290–001 (CRN: 20866)

Undergraduates: NPB 190C–008 (CRN: 40263)

Questions? Contact Stacey Combes (sacombes@ucdavis.edu) or Kate Laskowski (klaskowski@ucdavis.edu)