The Mills lab at the 2019 Wildlife Society annual conference in Reno

Group photo of the Mills lab team at TWS Reno

Earlier this month the Mills lab including almost all current graduate students and several lab alumni gathered for a week in Reno, Nevada for the 2019 Wildlife Society (TWS) annual conference, with members flying and driving in from all over the country.  

On the first full day of the conference, Mills lab PhD Candidate Jen Feltner presented a poster on her research entitled "Assessing the impacts of increasing wolf and grizzly bear populations on the habitat selection and foraging patterns of cougars in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (SGYE)."  Following the poster session, the Mills lab including alumni Diana Lafferty, Marketa Zimova, Paul Griffin, and Rebecca Taylor gathered for a reunion dinner at the Atlantis.  The following morning, Mills lab collaborator Lisa Mills and Scott gave a presentation on Elephant Friendly Tea, "An example of wildlife-science-based commercial incentive program to save an endangered species."  Wednesday was a busy day for the lab, with Scott, Marketa and PhD Candidate Alex Kumar giving presentations at the TWS Symposium "Understanding and adapting to climate change:  A focus on snow specialists."  Alex gave a talk called "Snow-mediated plasticity in phenology does not prevent camouflage mismatch," while Marketa spoke about "Adaptive capacity to camouflage mismatch: The heterogeneous responses to climate change across color molting species."  Scott gave the final presentation of the symposium on "Seasonal coat color as a model to foster adaptive rescue of wildlife confronting climate change."

Also attending the conference was new PhD student Hannah Walker and field technician Ashton Bates.  They combined the conference with a scouting mission for new snowshoe hare field sites in Oregon.  

It was an incredibly busy but productive week filled with presentations, meetings, and a lot of great opportunities to catch up with everyone. 

-Jen Feltner

Feature Image: The Mills Lab at TWS Reno (Image credit Lisa Mills)