Ruscena Wiederholt, Ph.D.
Assistant Research Scientist, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona
Post-doctoral Research Fellow, USGS John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis & Synthesis

Phone: (520) 626-9868
E-mail: rwiederh@hotmail.com

Area of expertise: conservation biology, population  dynamics, ecological modeling, ecosystem services

Ph.D. 2010. Pennsylvania State University, Ecology

M.S. 2005.  Pierre and Marie Curie University, Ecology, Biodiversity & Evolution

B.A. 2002. University of California-Berkeley, Integrative Biology

On January 16, 2012, Dr. Ruscena Wiederholt will join us as an Assistant Research Scientist.  Dr. Wiederholt received her B.A. from the University of California,. Berkeley in Integrative Biology.  After graduation, she worked on the incipient stages of the Grinnell project, a large-scale resurvey of California vertebrates, and then escaped to the tropics to work on forest ecology in Barro Colorado Island, Panama. She then headed in the opposite direction to Paris, where she received a M.S. from Pierre and Marie Curie University investigating sexual selection in passerines for her thesis research.

She remained grounded on the East Coast for many years to receive her Ph.D. in Ecology from Pennsylvania State University. Her dissertation research investigated the effects of climate change on primate population dynamics and reproduction, and the effects of reserve areas on hunting sustainability in primate populations.
She then moved south, and to smaller species, during a postdoctoral position at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland.  She modeled the effects of climate change and management strategies on endangered amphibian populations.