Lecture: Revealing the Depths of Our Sagebrush Seas

Revealing the Depths of Our Sagebrush Seas

By Dr. Anna Chalfoun

May 1, 2025
Noon–1 p.m.

Coe Auditorium

Join us for the May Lunchtime Expedition, when Dr. Anna Chalfoun from the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit and the University of Wyoming’s Zoology and Physiology Department presents Revealing the Depths of Our Sagebrush Seas.

While talks in our Lunchtime Expedition series are not live streamed, they will be recorded and posted to the Draper Museum’s YouTube channel within a day of their presentation.

About the program

More information on the presentation coming soon!

About the speaker

Anna Chalfoun joined the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit in May 2011 as the Assistant Unit Leader for Wildlife after working in a similar capacity with the Unit and Department of Zoology and Physiology as a Research Scientist beginning in Spring 2008.  She has an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Smith College, an M.S. in Wildlife Science with a Conservation Biology emphasis from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a Ph.D. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana-Missoula.

Anna’s work has largely focused on understanding wildlife-habitat relationships, and especially the contexts under which habitat choices are adaptive. A primary focal system for this work has been nest site selection in passerine birds and its consequences for the probability of nest predation. Other interests have included understanding the impacts of habitat fragmentation, and the evolution of life history traits with a focus on parental care behaviors in birds.

Current work in her lab spans multiple taxa (avian, mammalian, herpetofaunal) and has an emphasis on understanding the impacts of various types of anthropogenic change. Anna and her graduate students have on-going projects focused on birds and energy development (natural gas, coal-bed methane, wind), climate change impacts and the American pika, the impacts of the current mountain pine beetle pandemic on lodgepole birds and small mammals, and the utility of using the sage-grouse as an umbrella species for the conservation and management of non-game sagebrush species of concern. A primary focus of work in the lab is to provide timely information to agency cooperators to facilitate the management of Wyoming’s non-game wildlife species of greatest conservation need.

Upcoming Lunchtime Expeditions

The series generally continues on the first Thursday of each month from February through December. Confirmed speakers below:

• June 5: Dr. Laura Burkle, Montana State University, Topic TBD

Have you missed a Lunchtime Expedition?

The talks in this series are gathered in YouTube playlists by year:

• 2024 Lunchtime Expeditions
• 2023 Lunchtime Expeditions

Support for the Draper’s Lunchtime Expedition series has been made possible by Sage Creek Ranch and the Nancy-Carroll Draper Charitable Foundation.