Laurie A. Hall

Graduate Student

Research Description

My research interests are focused on the effects of population connectivity, via the dispersal of individuals, on population dynamics of threatened and endangered wildlife. I use a combination of direct and indirect techniques to measure dispersal, including mark-recapture, radio-telemetry, genetics, and stable isotope chemistry. In addition, I am interested in understanding long-term changes in connectivity and population dynamics in response to habitat loss and fragmentation and climate change.

My current dissertation work compares connectivity and metapopulation dynamics of two species of wetland bird: the California Black Rail (Laterallus jamaicensis) and the Virginia Rail (Rallus limicola). The California Black Rail is a small and secretive bird that is patchily distributed in California with the greatest densities of birds occurring in the San Francisco Bay area, the Sierra Foothills, and the Imperial Valley. Anecdotal evidence suggests Black Rails are poor flyers and likely have limited dispersal capabilities. In contrast, Virginia Rails are distributed in wetlands throughout California, and because of their larger size, they likely disperse greater distances and more frequently than Black Rails. In addition to differences in dispersal ability among Black and Virginia Rails, differences in habitat among Black Rail metapopulations in California offer an interesting comparison of connectivity and metapopulation dynamics within the species. The bay area wetlands where Black Rails are found are large (mean =68.2 ha), with varying salinities and are separated by greater distances than the wetlands of the foothills. The wetlands in the foothills are smaller (mean =3.63 ha), composed of fresh water and are closely aggregated. In the Imperial Valley Black Rails utilize moderately sized (mean =32.5 ha) freshwater wetlands. Among these regions, differences in wetlands such as habitat area, distance between habitat patches, and water availability may cause differences in the connectivity of habitat patches, which can in turn affect Black Rail metapopulation dynamics.

Selected Publications

Beissinger, S. R., Girard, P., Takekawa, J. Y., and Hall, L. A. 2010. Connectivity Within and Between Black Rail Metapopulations: Implications for Persisting Under Rising Sea-Levels. Poster presented at the Bay-Delta Science Conference, held September 20-22, 2010 in Sacramento, CA.
Peery, M. Z., Hall, L. A., Sellas, A., Beissinger, S., Moritz, C., Bérubé, M., Raphael, M, Nelson, K., Golightly, R., McFarlane-Tranquilla, L., Newman, S., and Palsbøll, P. J. 2010. Genetic analyses of historic and modern marbled murrelets suggest decoupling of migration and gene flow after habitat fragmentation. Proceeding of the Royal Society of London B.
Hall, L. A., Harvey, J. T., Palsbøll, P. J., Bérubé, M., Golightly, R., Newman, S., Raphael, M., McFarlane-Tranquilla, L., Nelson, S. K., Peery, M. Z. 2009. Characterizing dispersal patterns in a threatened seabird with limited genetic structure. Molecular Ecology.
Peery, M. Z., Beissinger, S. R., House, R. H., Bérubé, M., Hall, L. A., Selas, A., and Palsbøll, P. J. 2008. Characterizing source-sink dynamics with genetic parentage assignments. Ecology 89 (10):2746-2759.

Recent Teaching

• C103 - PRIN CONSERV BIOL
• 114 - WILDLIFE ECOLOGY