May 2022: Brzeski Lab PhD student Tiff DeGroot was featured in the Wildlife Society! Read the article and see some amazing camera images here.
April 2022: Our spring field season is in full swing in SW Louisiana. Dr. Joey Hinton  is continuing the work we started last year, deploying GPS collars on Gulf Coast coyotes. Check out this cool video, made by Amy Shutt.  
March 2022: Congratulations to Brzeski Lab PhD student Sam Hervey for being awarded the competitive DeVlieg Foundation Fellowship. The fellowship will support Sam throughout the summer so he can continue to focus on his PhD research.  
January 2022: We were featured in the New York Times! 
Picture
A pitfall trap captures multiple species of burying and carrion beetles. Credit: Katherine Schneider
December 2021: Check out Brzeski Lab PhD student Kath Scheinder's interview about her carrion beetle eDNA research for which she was awarded best student poster at this year national Wildlife Society meeting.
​
Picture
November 2021: The Gulf Coast Canine Project's new website is launched! Come visit and see our cool swag available for purchase and the amazing imagery created by Amy Shutt. Amy designed our new GCCP logo as well. Amy is tireless in her hard work toward wild canine conservation, as is evident with The Canid Project and The Red Wolf Project. THANK YOU AMY!!!!
Fall 2021: Time for some Brzeski Lab shout-outs! All of the students have been working diligently in the lab and on analyses, and it shows. PhD student Sam Hervey published the first genetic assessment of reintroduced Isle Royal wolves this year and continues to move forward with developing a GTseq assay for noninvasive genotyping to monitor inbreeding.  Tanner Barnes is almost done with his thesis evaluating red wolf genetic ancestry in Galveston Island canids and was just awarded the CFRES Outstanding Scholarship Award for his graduate research. MTU wildlife was well represented at this fall's National Wildlife Society meeting, with over 10 student presentations! Kath Schnieder was awarded the Best Student Poster Presentation of the 2021 Conference for her poster: Potential for Broad Biodiversity of Vertebrate Species Detection Using iDNA Analysis of Carrion Beetle Diets. 
January-May 2021: Trapping season! Thanks to a USFWS grant awarded to Dr. Brzeski and collaborators, we are in southwest Louisiana trapping coyotes. But these aren't just any coyotes-- they retain high amounts of red wolf genetic ancestry. We are deploying GPS collars, taking detailed morphological measurements, and conducting genome sequencing to better quantify genomic ancestry, and measure the behavioral and physiological  impacts of an individual possessing high amounts of red wolf genetic ancestry.  Big thanks to the FWS refuge folks in SWLA for the support, and to Dr. Joey Hinton for his skilled trapping, where he deployed all 25 GPS collars during a difficult season of balancing research goals and Covid safety. 
May 2020: After a hard transition to online only and having to shut down the Conservation Genetics lab due to Covid, I'm proud to announce the Brzeski Lab students finished the semester strong.
  • Rachel Christensen was awarded 'Outstanding Senior in Wildlife Ecology and Management', the most prestigious award for wildlife undergrads in CFRES. It was well deserved!!
  • Tanner Barnes was was awarded the student selected 'Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Assistant' for his diligent work TAing this past year.
​And that's not all...
  • Brzeski Lab graduated students Tanner Barnes, Tiff DeGroot, and Sam Hervey all received Ecosystem Science Grants this past year to conduct their grad research. 
  • Brzeski Lab undergraduate Claudia Zinser was award a competitive SURF fellowship (postponed due do Covid until Summer 2021).
January 2020: We're excited to welcome Sam Hervey to the lab. Sam will be conducting his PhD on the reintroduced Isle Royale wolves. He is joining us from North Dakota and just published his MSc research on common eider brood parasitism in Molecular Ecology. 
 December 2019: FUNDING ANNOUNCEMENT! In partnership with Dr. Gord Paterson at the GLRC, we were awarded a Great Lakes Fishery Commission grant of $142,283 for 'An epigenetic assessment of stamp sand toxicity to salmonid eggs at Buffalo Reef, Lake Superior.' We are seeking a PhD student to lead this project; see advertisement here. POSITION FILLED.
October 2019: I was invited to present at the Arkansas Biosciences Institute Seminar, at Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, AR. I spoke about red wolves, as one does at a university who's mascot is the Red Wolf. I even had an opportunity to visit a  sculpture of the mascot.
July 2019: New PhD advertisement: The Brzeski Lab, in partnership with the National Park Service, will lead the initial genomic assessments and monitoring of wolves recently translocated to Isle Royale National Park. This project will contribute to and continue  the long-tradition of predator/prey interactions on the island. Details can be found at here and here.
Picture
Photo Credit: Isle Royale National Park Service
July 2019: We're in the full swing of the Summer 2019 field season. Our wildlife crew is trapping small mammals, setting trail cameras, banding birds, and collecting invertebrates across silviculture treatments at SFRES Ford Center. These data will help us understand how small-scale forestry practices impact wildlife communities.
April 2019: Excited to announce Brzeski Lab members Tanner and Rachel were honored at the SFRES Overstory Award event. Tanner was awarded Outstanding Wildlife Ecology and Management Undergraduate, the most prestigious undergraduate award voted on by faculty. Rachel won the Grand Prize for best undergraduate poster at the annual Ecosystem Science Center symposium. Rachel's poster introduced her senior project focused on avian malaria in the UP. We're very proud of both of them for their outstanding efforts in undergraduate research!
Picture
Tanner and Rachel at awards ceremony.
Feb. 2019: Biodiversity Initiative is in Cameroon! Kristin kicked off the applied section of BI's Quantitative Ecology workshop in Yaounde, Cameroon. She also had the pleasure of leading a lunch for early career women in science. What a truly inspiring group of women.
Jan. 2019: The intrepid Biodiversity Initiative field crew finished the 2018-2019 data collection for our long-running forest plots in the developing city of Oyala, Equatorial Guinea.  We accomplished a lot in 4 short weeks including banding 100s of birds, discovering new bat records for region, deploying cameras on every corner of our plots, and developing new environmental DNA collection techniques. Kristin and Tiff also had the great delight of joining colleague David Fernandez, for a project in collaboration with Gráinne McCabe, in an expedition to Monte Alen, the largest Protected Area in Equatorial Guinea. We saw elephant tracks and gorilla feeding areas, heard chimpanzees, and deployed cameras to remote regions of the park. Overall, it was a great EG field season with an amazing crew of hard working people.
Nov. 6 2018: MTU's Mammalogy class just finished camera trap data collection on the newly donated Nara Family Forest, near Lake Linden, MI. This was the first ever study to assess mammalian community diversity on the new tech property. Highlights from the study included detecting the back end of a gray wolf, a pesky black bear that tore down a camera, a fisher, and SQUIRRELS!
​​

​Oct. 22 2018: Fun times were had with MTU prof Jared Wolfe's Wildlife Habitats class catching song birds on a crisp October day in Alberta. MTU WILDLIFE at its best :)
​BREAKING NEWS!! Sept. 18 2018: Kristin and colleagues at Princeton University just released a pre-print manuscript documenting the re-discovery of red wolf ancestry in Gulf Coast canids. Red wolves were believed to be extinct from this region since the 1980s; this unprecedented discovery opens new avenues for contemporary red wolf conservation and management. Check out our full manuscript.
Sep. 16 2018: New MS advertisement: Wildlife MS position - Biodiversity Surveys in Central Africa. Interested in applied conservation research?  Waiting for the perfect graduate opportunity? Look no further, we are seeking a candidate to join the Biodiversity Initiative team conducting camera trap and eDNA surveys in Central Africa. Details can be found at here and at https://www.mtu.edu/forest/graduate/funding/
Aug. 20 2018: The official start of MTU Fall 2018!! Welcome back students; Kristin is getting geared up for her first semester teaching Mammalogy. 

Dec. 7 2017: Kristin officially accepted an Assistant Professorship in the College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science at MTU. Yooper-life here we come!!