Brad Cosentino - Project Director and Associate Professor, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Brad’s research team is using field and genomic tools to better understand the adaptive and non-adaptive mechanisms causing the evolution of squirrel coat color.
Gisella Caccone - Project Co-Director, Senior Research Scientist and Lecturer, Yale University
Gisella’s research team is focusing on using genomic tools to identify signatures of selection on pigmentation genes and understand landscape drivers of non-adaptive evolutionary forces.
James Gibbs - Project Co-Director and Professor, SUNY-ESF
James’ research team is using field studies to better understand selective pressures on squirrel coat color.
Alex Blumenfeld - Environmental Protection Agency
Alex is a former postdoc at Yale and continues to collaborate with us on understanding population genomic structure and identifying genomic signatures of selection at pigmentation genes.
Meagwin Bonar. - Postdoctoral Scholar, Yale University
Maegwin is using genomic tools to identify signatures of selection at the melanocortin-1 receptor gene and using whole genome sequencing to more generally test for signatures of urban adaptation.
Jesse Borden - Postdoctoral scholar, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Jesse is working on using causal inference approaches to test hypotheses about spatial variation in squirrel coat color morphs within and among cities.
Sam Denenberg, Research Technician, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Sam is leading fieldwork to experimentally investigate predation pressure on squirrel color morphs in urban and rural environments.
Nicole Fusco - Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut
Nicole is a former postdoc on the project and continues to collaborate with us on understanding population genomic structure and identifying genomic signatures of selection at pigmentation genes.
Adam Parlin - Postdoctoral Scholar, SUNY-ESF
Adam is conducting field work to understand how squirrel coat color affects road mortality risk, and he’s using LoRaWAN to track squirrel movements at high revolution to compare differences in activity, movement, and space use between morphs.
Jessica Proctor - MSc student, SUNY-ESF
Jess is using SquirrelSpotter and image analysis to better understand how urbanization affects the visibility of squirrel color morphs to predators and people.
John Vanek - Zoologist, New York Natural Heritage Program
John was a postdoc on the project at Hobart and William Smith, leading our trail camera surveying to document urban-rural clines in coat color. John also led an to test for differential survival between squirrel color morphs in urban and rural areas.
Kara Vredenburgh
Kara has worked in both formal and informal science education as an environmental educator, middle school science teacher and camp director and leads SquirrelMapper’s education program
Katherine Weiss, PhD Student, Arizona State University
Kate is collaborating on our efforts to understand how predation affects the evolution of squirrel coat color in the context of urbanization.