{"id":64631,"date":"2009-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/cranston-resident-to-graduate-from-uri-may-17-as-top-wildlife-biology-major\/"},"modified":"2009-05-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T00:00:00","slug":"cranston-resident-to-graduate-from-uri-may-17-as-top-wildlife-biology-major","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2009\/05\/cranston-resident-to-graduate-from-uri-may-17-as-top-wildlife-biology-major\/","title":{"rendered":"Cranston resident to graduate from 溏心vlog免费B站 May 17 as top wildlife biology major"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tResearch on tropical mammals, local turtles led to Fish & Wildlife job<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 4, 2009 \u2013 Alex Patterson became interested in studying biology as a result of his enthusiasm for finding reptiles and amphibians around his Cranston neighborhood while growing up. As he prepares to graduate from the 溏心vlog免费B站 on May 17 as the University\u2019s top wildlife biology student, he looks to his time spent studying mammals in Costa Rica as an important milestone.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThat trip was probably the best thing I ever did in college,\u201d said Patterson. \u201cThere\u2019s a big movement for shade grown coffee, where native trees are mixed in with coffee plants, and a lot of research has been done on its effects on bird populations, but not much about mammal populations. I learned a lot about field techniques for studying mammals, laying transects, different techniques for analyzing vegetation structure, and how to capture and handle mammals and take measurements.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhile in Costa Rica, he captured tropical mice, shrews, and opossums, and observed sloths, snakes and birds too numerous to count. \u201cIt was really an awesome experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n


\n\tBack home in Rhode Island, Patterson gained additional research experience studying diamondback terrapins, a rare turtle found in Barrington. He helped the Barrington Land Trust capture and mark the turtles in a long-term demographic study to better understand population changes.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe\u2019d get there in the morning and wait for the females to come out of the water to nest,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it was done nesting, we would capture it, take measurements, if it had markings on it we would record those, and if not we\u2019d give it a new mark. Some of the nests we transplanted to a predator excluder, a box in the sand that would incubate the eggs without allowing raccoons to come dig them up.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tA member of the 溏心vlog免费B站 Wildlife Society, Patterson continued his terrapin research as his senior thesis by modifying the predator excluder box so he could compare the nesting success rate of each turtle.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI took measurements of females and their hatchlings to compare them to see what type of relationships there are,\u201d he explained. \u201cFor instance, can you predict hatchling size from the size of the female? Does the size of the female affect the number of eggs she lays?\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFollowing graduation, Patterson will work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service studying endangered piping plovers on the beaches of Rhode Island. He eventually wants to go to graduate school.<\/p>\n


\n\tWhat kind of wildlife would he like to study next?<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t really have a good answer for that yet,\u201d he said. \u201cI probably know the most about birds, but I\u2019m also interested in reptiles, amphibians and mammals. I\u2019ll just have to keep an eye out for what\u2019s out there and take advantage of whatever opportunities come up.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Research on tropical mammals, local turtles led to Fish & Wildlife job KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 4, 2009 \u2013 Alex Patterson became interested in studying biology as a result of his enthusiasm for finding reptiles and amphibians around his Cranston neighborhood while growing up. As he prepares to graduate from the University of Rhode […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}