We combine observational data with statistical modeling approaches to investigate questions
at the interface of ecological theory and conservation biology.
The primary goals of our research are to:
1) Identify mechanisms that structure tropical vertebrate communities across spatial scales
2) Understand how tropical mammals and birds respond to global change
3) Apply results to biodiversity conservation
Community and MacroecologyWe study the drivers of variation in communities across taxonomic groups, ecological systems and spatial scales, with emphasis on tropical mammals and birds and the resources they require.
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Global Change BiologyHabitat loss and climate change are two of the most critical threats to biodiversity worldwide. We study how these aspects of global change affect tropical vertebrate diversity and local extinction risk.
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Conservation BiologyWe conduct research in collaboration with TEAM, a
global tropical biodiversity monitoring network. (Photo: Benjamin Drummond) |
Statement of support for racial equality and diversity
As a lab we express solidarity with the Biosciences Department and Rice University leadership to combat the racism, discrimination, and inequality, which not only permeate our society but occur in academia as well. Although we recognize we have substantial work to do, we are firmly committed to work towards Rice University's stated goals of expanding and supporting diversity and fostering inclusiveness in our lab. We recognize and celebrate the contributions of diverse perspectives, ideas and backgrounds in all our endeavors. We commit ourselves to creating welcoming, safe spaces and we invite feedback and conversations so that we can continue to do better.
Lab News
July 2021: New article entitled "Biotic and abiotic drivers of dispersion dynamics in a large-bodied tropical vertebrate, the Western Bornean orangutan" published in Oecologia. Andy Marshall led the paper in collaboration for the final analysis with Elise Zipkin and her PhD student Matt Farr. Lydia contributed to data processing, early stages of analysis and editing of the manuscript.
Lydia returns from leave
June 2021: Lydia gives an invited presentation for the American Society of Mammalogists annual meeting on "Functional ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals in protected areas worldwide" in the the symposium "Frontiers in trait-based mammalian ecology" organized by Tara Smiley and Brooks Kohli.
Congratulations to Chia on winning a $16,000 scholarship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education and the ONLY award in ecology!
May 2021: Congratulations to incoming PhD student Kristin on being awarded the Dean of Natural Sciences Worden Fellowship for 2021-2022!
April 2021: Lydia joins the editorial advisory board for Ethology, Ecology and Evolution.
Congratulations to Dan for winning the $15,000 Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship!
Lydia is invited to join the IUCN Species Survival Commission Species Monitoring Specialist Group for the 2021-2024 quadrennium.
March 2021: Lydia gives an invited seminar for the University of Liverpool School of Environmental Sciences entitled "Global ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals in protected areas".
Lab picnic to celebrate all of Dan and Chia's hard work and accomplishments!
February 2021: Dan's new article published in Proceeding B and his photograph of an elephant taken in Tanzania was selected for the cover!
Kristin Brandon accepts offer to join the lab in the fall of 2021 as a PhD student. We are thrilled!
January 2021: Dan's manuscript entitled "Tropical mammal functional diversity increases with productivity but decreases with anthropogenic disturbance" accepted by Proceedings B. Congratulations, Dan!
Lydia is on leave for spring 2021 and will not be taking service requests during this time.
November 2020: Pizza in the park with Kory Evans' lab!
October 2020: Congratulations to Dan for winning the Diana McSherry and Patrick Poe Research Award in
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology!
Media coverage for Dan's Biotropica paper by National Park Traveler!
September 2020: Macro-ecology & -evolution joint reading group with Kory Evans' lab gets started
Dan's new article "Functional diversity and redundancy of tropical forest mammals over time" published online in Biotropica!! Check out the press release from Rice news. Congratulations on your first publication, Dan!!
August 2020: Socially distanced lab brunch at Hermann Park - so nice to be together in person after all these months!
New article entitled "Mixed-species groups of Serengeti grazers: a test of the stress gradient hypothesis" published online in Ecology. Lydia led the manuscript in collaboration with Dr. Meredith Palmer. It was inspired by a talk Meredith gave at the 2018 Gordon Research Conference on Predator-Prey Interactions. Check out the Rice news release.
Dan and Lydia present virtually at ESA 2020
May 2020: Review article from a Gordon Research Conference working group that Lydia spearheaded published in Journal of Animal Ecology. A fantastic core team of junior scholars - Dr. Justine Smith, Dr. Justin Suraci, Dr. Jen Hunter, Dr. Kaitlyn Gaynor, Carson Keller and Dr. Meredith Palmer - led the writing.
April 2020: Dan receives an NSF GRF Honorable Mention and $5,000 for research from the Lewis & Clark Fund through the America Philosophical Society all in one week! Congratulations, Dan!
March 2020: New article entitled "Comparison of species richness and detection between line transects, ground camera traps, and arboreal camera traps" led by former postdoc Jennifer Moore during her time in the lab published online in Animal Conservation. Check out the media coverage on Mongabay.
Lydia gives a guest seminar for Rice's Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences department on "Ecology and conservation of tropical wildlife"
February 2020: Lydia visits Duke University and gives an invited seminar for the University Program in Ecology on "Ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals in protected areas worldwide"
January 2020: New article entitled "Local extinction risk under climate change in a asymmetrically dispersed neotropical epiphyte" led by collaborator Miguel Acevedo published online in the Journal of Ecology.
Richard Corlett wrote a commentary for PNAS entitled "Present-day drivers do not explain biodiversity patterns in mammals" for our article. NSF also highlighted the paper in research news.
December 2019: New article entitled "Geographically divergent evolutionary and ecological legacies shape mammal biodiversity in the global tropics and subtropics" published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Check out the Rice press release, UMass press release and ASU press release.
Lab dinner!
Lydia presents at the International Symposium of Integrative Zoology in New Zealand on geographical variation in mammal food webs as a part of the symposium she co-organized on "Wildlife monitoring for conservation with camera trapping" with Zhishu Xiao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology.
November 2019: New article entitled "Camera trapping reveals trends in forest duiker populations in African National Parks" led by Tim O'Brien was published online in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. Both Lydia and Jennifer co-authored the manuscript.
October 2019: Lydia visits Columbia University and gives an invited seminar for the Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B) Department on "Insights into the ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals from a global monitoring network"
Lydia chairs the Global Change Lightning talks hosted by the Institute for Biosciences and Bioengineering at Rice. We had 12 terrific talks from faculty in the Schools of Engineering, Natural Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences and Architecture prompting wonderful discussions and idea generation for interdisciplinary opportunities. Check out the Rice news coverage and the cartoon video Rick Wilson from Political Science developed.
Lydia presents at the Ken Kennedy Institute luncheon "Evaluating tropical wildlife globally using standardized in situ data"
September 2019: Joint Dunham-Beaudrot lab dinner!
August 2019: Dan wins a 20k grant from Northrop Grumman and Conservation International to examine the role of vegetation in mammal functional diversity. Congratulations, Dan!
Chia Hsieh joins the lab. Welcome to Houston and to Rice, Chia!
Lydia presents on geographical variation in terrestrial mammal food webs at ESA in Louisville, Kentucky.
Madagascar trip!! Lydia & Dan present at ATBC in Antananarivo, hike in Andasibe-Mantadia National Park and visit Centre ValBio adjacent to Ranomafana National Park. We had so much fun traveling with Amy, Therese and Jade from the Dunham lab, visiting with collaborators, meeting terrific scientists from around the world, checking out TEAM camera trapping sites, and seeing 10 species of lemurs!
July 2019: Dan visits Udzungwa Ecological Monitoring Centre in Udzungwa National Park in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania to check out the research station and TEAM camera trapping for future field work possibilities.
Check out Dan's awesome new website!
Jennifer departs the lab. Best of luck in your next pursuit.
June 2019: New article entitled "Local temperature and ecological similarity drive distributional dynamics of tropical mammals worldwide" published online in Global Ecology and Biogeography. Check out the Rice press release and intro to our lab video.
Joint Dunham-Beaudrot lab dinner!
May 2019: Jennifer wins a Rice Women in Natural Science travel award to present at the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation meeting in Madagascar
April 2019: Chia Hsieh accepts offer to join the lab in the fall of 2019 as a PhD student. We are thrilled!
Jennifer wins a postdoc travel award from the American Society of Mammalogists to present her research comparing species richness and detection using line transects, ground cameras and arboreal cameras at the ASM meeting in Washington DC this summer!
March 2019: Jennifer attends an invited workshop at Oxford entitled "Learning from observational data to tackle illegal behavior for conservation"
Dan wins the top prize travel award from the Rice Institute of BioSciences and Bioengineering!
The Beaudrot Lab GitHub page is up and running
New article published in the Journal of Tropical Ecology: Differences among regions in environmental predictors of primate community similarity affect conclusions about community assembly
Lab outing to Memorial Park to set up camera traps with the Memorial Park Conservancy
Lab outing to see the Houston Rodeo and Zac Brown Band perform!
February 2019: Symposium entitled "Synthesizing camera trapping data for tropical ecology and conservation" that Lydia organized has been accepted for the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation meeting in Madagascar this summer!
January 2019: New article published in Oryx: Detecting tropical wildlife declines through camera-trap monitoring: an evaluation of the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring protocol
Lydia gives a talk in the Machine Learning Lunch Series at Rice entitled "Image data and analysis for tropical conservation"
Lab outing to the Houston Museum of Natural Science for a talk by Dr. Jill Pruetz entitled "Redefining human evolution: understanding chimpanzees on the savanna"
Beaudrot & Dunham joint lab meetings get started
December 2018: New article entitled "Distributional shifts in a biodiversity hotspot" published in Biological Conservation
Joint Dunham-Beaudrot lab dinner!
November 2018: Dr. Jennifer Moore joins the lab as a postdoc. Welcome, Jennifer!
Lab dinner!
October 2018: Lydia attends the 10th International Symposium of Integrative Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China and presents on the impacts of global change on terrestrial mammals in tropical forest protected areas.
New article entitled "Effects of environmental stress on primate populations" published in Annual Review of Anthropology:
August 2018: Dan Gorczynski joins the lab as a PhD student in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Program at Rice and the EEB Worden Fellow. Welcome, Dan, and congratulations on your first-year fellowship!
Lydia gives keynote address at the 2018 BioSciences at Rice Symposium
July 2018: Lydia officially joins the BioSciences faculty at Rice University
As a lab we express solidarity with the Biosciences Department and Rice University leadership to combat the racism, discrimination, and inequality, which not only permeate our society but occur in academia as well. Although we recognize we have substantial work to do, we are firmly committed to work towards Rice University's stated goals of expanding and supporting diversity and fostering inclusiveness in our lab. We recognize and celebrate the contributions of diverse perspectives, ideas and backgrounds in all our endeavors. We commit ourselves to creating welcoming, safe spaces and we invite feedback and conversations so that we can continue to do better.
Lab News
July 2021: New article entitled "Biotic and abiotic drivers of dispersion dynamics in a large-bodied tropical vertebrate, the Western Bornean orangutan" published in Oecologia. Andy Marshall led the paper in collaboration for the final analysis with Elise Zipkin and her PhD student Matt Farr. Lydia contributed to data processing, early stages of analysis and editing of the manuscript.
Lydia returns from leave
June 2021: Lydia gives an invited presentation for the American Society of Mammalogists annual meeting on "Functional ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals in protected areas worldwide" in the the symposium "Frontiers in trait-based mammalian ecology" organized by Tara Smiley and Brooks Kohli.
Congratulations to Chia on winning a $16,000 scholarship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education and the ONLY award in ecology!
May 2021: Congratulations to incoming PhD student Kristin on being awarded the Dean of Natural Sciences Worden Fellowship for 2021-2022!
April 2021: Lydia joins the editorial advisory board for Ethology, Ecology and Evolution.
Congratulations to Dan for winning the $15,000 Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship!
Lydia is invited to join the IUCN Species Survival Commission Species Monitoring Specialist Group for the 2021-2024 quadrennium.
March 2021: Lydia gives an invited seminar for the University of Liverpool School of Environmental Sciences entitled "Global ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals in protected areas".
Lab picnic to celebrate all of Dan and Chia's hard work and accomplishments!
February 2021: Dan's new article published in Proceeding B and his photograph of an elephant taken in Tanzania was selected for the cover!
Kristin Brandon accepts offer to join the lab in the fall of 2021 as a PhD student. We are thrilled!
January 2021: Dan's manuscript entitled "Tropical mammal functional diversity increases with productivity but decreases with anthropogenic disturbance" accepted by Proceedings B. Congratulations, Dan!
Lydia is on leave for spring 2021 and will not be taking service requests during this time.
November 2020: Pizza in the park with Kory Evans' lab!
October 2020: Congratulations to Dan for winning the Diana McSherry and Patrick Poe Research Award in
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology!
Media coverage for Dan's Biotropica paper by National Park Traveler!
September 2020: Macro-ecology & -evolution joint reading group with Kory Evans' lab gets started
Dan's new article "Functional diversity and redundancy of tropical forest mammals over time" published online in Biotropica!! Check out the press release from Rice news. Congratulations on your first publication, Dan!!
August 2020: Socially distanced lab brunch at Hermann Park - so nice to be together in person after all these months!
New article entitled "Mixed-species groups of Serengeti grazers: a test of the stress gradient hypothesis" published online in Ecology. Lydia led the manuscript in collaboration with Dr. Meredith Palmer. It was inspired by a talk Meredith gave at the 2018 Gordon Research Conference on Predator-Prey Interactions. Check out the Rice news release.
Dan and Lydia present virtually at ESA 2020
May 2020: Review article from a Gordon Research Conference working group that Lydia spearheaded published in Journal of Animal Ecology. A fantastic core team of junior scholars - Dr. Justine Smith, Dr. Justin Suraci, Dr. Jen Hunter, Dr. Kaitlyn Gaynor, Carson Keller and Dr. Meredith Palmer - led the writing.
April 2020: Dan receives an NSF GRF Honorable Mention and $5,000 for research from the Lewis & Clark Fund through the America Philosophical Society all in one week! Congratulations, Dan!
March 2020: New article entitled "Comparison of species richness and detection between line transects, ground camera traps, and arboreal camera traps" led by former postdoc Jennifer Moore during her time in the lab published online in Animal Conservation. Check out the media coverage on Mongabay.
Lydia gives a guest seminar for Rice's Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences department on "Ecology and conservation of tropical wildlife"
February 2020: Lydia visits Duke University and gives an invited seminar for the University Program in Ecology on "Ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals in protected areas worldwide"
January 2020: New article entitled "Local extinction risk under climate change in a asymmetrically dispersed neotropical epiphyte" led by collaborator Miguel Acevedo published online in the Journal of Ecology.
Richard Corlett wrote a commentary for PNAS entitled "Present-day drivers do not explain biodiversity patterns in mammals" for our article. NSF also highlighted the paper in research news.
December 2019: New article entitled "Geographically divergent evolutionary and ecological legacies shape mammal biodiversity in the global tropics and subtropics" published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Check out the Rice press release, UMass press release and ASU press release.
Lab dinner!
Lydia presents at the International Symposium of Integrative Zoology in New Zealand on geographical variation in mammal food webs as a part of the symposium she co-organized on "Wildlife monitoring for conservation with camera trapping" with Zhishu Xiao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology.
November 2019: New article entitled "Camera trapping reveals trends in forest duiker populations in African National Parks" led by Tim O'Brien was published online in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. Both Lydia and Jennifer co-authored the manuscript.
October 2019: Lydia visits Columbia University and gives an invited seminar for the Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B) Department on "Insights into the ecology and conservation of tropical forest mammals from a global monitoring network"
Lydia chairs the Global Change Lightning talks hosted by the Institute for Biosciences and Bioengineering at Rice. We had 12 terrific talks from faculty in the Schools of Engineering, Natural Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences and Architecture prompting wonderful discussions and idea generation for interdisciplinary opportunities. Check out the Rice news coverage and the cartoon video Rick Wilson from Political Science developed.
Lydia presents at the Ken Kennedy Institute luncheon "Evaluating tropical wildlife globally using standardized in situ data"
September 2019: Joint Dunham-Beaudrot lab dinner!
August 2019: Dan wins a 20k grant from Northrop Grumman and Conservation International to examine the role of vegetation in mammal functional diversity. Congratulations, Dan!
Chia Hsieh joins the lab. Welcome to Houston and to Rice, Chia!
Lydia presents on geographical variation in terrestrial mammal food webs at ESA in Louisville, Kentucky.
Madagascar trip!! Lydia & Dan present at ATBC in Antananarivo, hike in Andasibe-Mantadia National Park and visit Centre ValBio adjacent to Ranomafana National Park. We had so much fun traveling with Amy, Therese and Jade from the Dunham lab, visiting with collaborators, meeting terrific scientists from around the world, checking out TEAM camera trapping sites, and seeing 10 species of lemurs!
July 2019: Dan visits Udzungwa Ecological Monitoring Centre in Udzungwa National Park in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania to check out the research station and TEAM camera trapping for future field work possibilities.
Check out Dan's awesome new website!
Jennifer departs the lab. Best of luck in your next pursuit.
June 2019: New article entitled "Local temperature and ecological similarity drive distributional dynamics of tropical mammals worldwide" published online in Global Ecology and Biogeography. Check out the Rice press release and intro to our lab video.
Joint Dunham-Beaudrot lab dinner!
May 2019: Jennifer wins a Rice Women in Natural Science travel award to present at the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation meeting in Madagascar
April 2019: Chia Hsieh accepts offer to join the lab in the fall of 2019 as a PhD student. We are thrilled!
Jennifer wins a postdoc travel award from the American Society of Mammalogists to present her research comparing species richness and detection using line transects, ground cameras and arboreal cameras at the ASM meeting in Washington DC this summer!
March 2019: Jennifer attends an invited workshop at Oxford entitled "Learning from observational data to tackle illegal behavior for conservation"
Dan wins the top prize travel award from the Rice Institute of BioSciences and Bioengineering!
The Beaudrot Lab GitHub page is up and running
New article published in the Journal of Tropical Ecology: Differences among regions in environmental predictors of primate community similarity affect conclusions about community assembly
Lab outing to Memorial Park to set up camera traps with the Memorial Park Conservancy
Lab outing to see the Houston Rodeo and Zac Brown Band perform!
February 2019: Symposium entitled "Synthesizing camera trapping data for tropical ecology and conservation" that Lydia organized has been accepted for the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation meeting in Madagascar this summer!
January 2019: New article published in Oryx: Detecting tropical wildlife declines through camera-trap monitoring: an evaluation of the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring protocol
Lydia gives a talk in the Machine Learning Lunch Series at Rice entitled "Image data and analysis for tropical conservation"
Lab outing to the Houston Museum of Natural Science for a talk by Dr. Jill Pruetz entitled "Redefining human evolution: understanding chimpanzees on the savanna"
Beaudrot & Dunham joint lab meetings get started
December 2018: New article entitled "Distributional shifts in a biodiversity hotspot" published in Biological Conservation
Joint Dunham-Beaudrot lab dinner!
November 2018: Dr. Jennifer Moore joins the lab as a postdoc. Welcome, Jennifer!
Lab dinner!
October 2018: Lydia attends the 10th International Symposium of Integrative Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China and presents on the impacts of global change on terrestrial mammals in tropical forest protected areas.
New article entitled "Effects of environmental stress on primate populations" published in Annual Review of Anthropology:
August 2018: Dan Gorczynski joins the lab as a PhD student in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Program at Rice and the EEB Worden Fellow. Welcome, Dan, and congratulations on your first-year fellowship!
Lydia gives keynote address at the 2018 BioSciences at Rice Symposium
July 2018: Lydia officially joins the BioSciences faculty at Rice University
