An adult female polar bear walking on a metabolic treadmill at the Oregon Zoo for energetics research. See Pagano et al. (2018) for additional details.
An animal's energy demands and foraging success ultimately determines their survival and reproductive success. I link measures of energy expenditure and behavior with wildlife habitat use and environmental conditions to understand the ability of these animals to survive in a changing ecosystem to inform conservation and management decisions. My research has included the use of tri-axial accelerometers to remotely discriminate behavior and energy expenditure as well as the use of doubly-labeled water to measure field metabolic rates.
This research has been in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey , Institute for Conservation Research, San Diego Zoo Global, University of California Santa Cruz, Polar Bears International, Oregon Zoo, Alaska Zoo, and Bear Center at Washington State University.
