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email:  marmots@ucla.edu
phone:  310-267-4746
fax:  (310) 206-3987
office:  LSB 4808
lab:  
homepage:  http://www.eeb.ucla.edu/Faculty/Blumstein/

research interests:  The evolution of behavior and the integration of behavior and conservation biology.

Research Interests

Broadly, I am interested in the evolution of social and antipredator behavior and the ramifications mechanisms of behavior have for higher level ecological processes and for wildlife conservation. I have spent over a decade studying the evolution of complex communication and sociality and used the 14 species of marmots (Marmota-cat-sized sciurid rodents found throughout the northern hemisphere) as a model system.

Much of my marmot work now focuses on the yellow-bellied marmots of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (www.rmbl.org) which have been studied continuously since 1962.

A main theme in my research is integrating knowledge of animal behavior into conservation biology. Ultimately, I aim to illustrate, through examples, how knowledge of behavior should influence policy.

In addition to my more theoretical work, I've been actively engaged in using ecotourism as a form of community development and as a way to conserve natural resources. My theoretical research interests are particularly relevant to the applied work because ecotourism can adversely impact wildlife. Ultimately, it is the wildlife's perception of human impacts that matters.

Selected Publications

Blumstein, D.T. and A.P. Møller. 2008. Is sociality associated with high longevity in North American birds? Biology Letters 4: 146-148 .

Borrego, N. Ozgul, A., Armitage, K.B., Blumstein, D.T. and M.K. Oli. 2008. Spatiotemporal variation in survival of male yellow-bellied marmots Journal of Mammology 89: 365-373 .

Coleman, A., Richardson, D., Schechter, R. and D.T. Blumstein. 2008. Does habituation to humans influence predator discrimination in Gunther's dik-diks (Madoqua guentheri)? Biology Letters 4: 250-252 .

Wey, T., Blumstein, D.T., Shen, W. and F. Jordan. 2008. Social network analysis of animal behaviour: a promising tool for the study of sociality Animal Behaviour 75: 333-344 .

Blumstein, D.T.. 2008. Does agriculture drive predator-mediated behavioral effects on prey? Animal Conservation 11: 9-10 .

Allen, M., Girod, L., Newton R., Madden, S., Blumstein, D.T. and D. Estrin. 2008. VoxNet: An interactive, rapidly-deployable acoustic monitoring platform IPSN: Proceedings of the seventh international conference on Information processing in sensor networks, New York ACM Press .

Blumstein, D.T.. 2008. In Focus: Wary elk support the risk allocation hypothesis Animal Behavior [link].

Blumstein, D.T.. 2008. In Focus: Calling for Different Purposes Animal Behavior [link].

Blumstein, D.T.. 2008. A localized ecological disaster The Denver Post [link].

Blumstein, D.T.. 2007. The evolution, function, and meaning of marmot alarm communication Advances in the Study of Behavior 37: 371-400 .