Welcome to the Martin Lab Website!
The Martin Lab studies bison using multidisciplinary methods. We use wildlife biology, climatology, vertebrate paleontology, and human dimensions to answer questions of bison conservation and production in a changing world. Our research on bison is at the nexus of two paradigms: changing climate and changing cultural values. Our goal is to merge understanding of conservation science with direct stakeholder engagement to improve conservation for wildlife across working and natural lands. We focus on both direct and indirect drivers and consequences of body size change using bison (Bison bison) from the Great Plains as a focal species. Bison are unique in North America because they are both native wildlife and privately owned livestock (i.e., Bison Management System). Bison are natural indicators of climatic and ecological change for the Great Plains because wildlife species cannot be supplied growth stimulants.
My lab research program focuses on:
To do this, I quantify the biophysical aspects of bison responses to climatic change with aims to understand the long-term and short-term consequences of climate change on wildlife species by creating large data sets and innovating methods such as:
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My lab research program focuses on:
- the physiological drivers and responses of bison to climate change,
- the management decision consequences of those responses for managers, and
- re-thinking the North American Model for wildlife management and conservation and conventional livestock agriculture using the bison management system (BMS).
To do this, I quantify the biophysical aspects of bison responses to climatic change with aims to understand the long-term and short-term consequences of climate change on wildlife species by creating large data sets and innovating methods such as:
- large-data analysis of deep-time and long-term ecological data correlating environmental traits with phenotype/morphology,
- high-resolution thermal imagery to quantify thermoregulatory metabolic energy costs (i.e. seasonal heat flux) over growth and geography, and
- surveying bison managers from across all sectors of the bison management system to gain insights for best-practices and better understanding the linkages between management decisions and enabling evolutionary adaptation and plasticity to climatic change.
Thank you for visiting!
