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Tom Contreras

Courtesy Faculty/NSF Postdoctoral Fellow

Dept. of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation

110 Newins-Ziegler Hall

University of Florida

Gainesville, FL 32611-0430

Phone: 352.246.8210

Email: tcontrer@ufl.edu

Education

Ph.D. in Biology (Landscape Ecology), 2002, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario.

M.Sc. in Conservation Biology, 1995, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI.

M.A. in Teaching Biology, 1991, Central Michigan University.

B.Sc. in Ed.,1984, Central Michigan University.

Research Interest

I am interested in how changes in landscape characteristics affect the movement and dispersal of plants and animals. My current research focuses on how forest loss and fragmentation affects the home range movement of mixed-species wintering bird flocks in north-central Florida. Specific questions deal with how socially-dominant species in these flocks may facilitate the movement of other flock members by reducing the actual and perceived predation risk for those species.

Courses

WIS 6934 Behavioral Landscape Ecology; taught Fall 2004.

Selected Publications

Sieving, K. E., T. A. Contreras, and K. L. Maute. 2004. Forest boundary crossing by mobbing understory birds: Effects of cover and heterospecific facilitation. Auk 121(3): 738-751.

Brennan, J. M., D. J. Bender, T. A. Contreras, and L. Fahrig. 2002. Focal patch landscape studies for wildlife management: optimizing sampling effort across scales, In Integrating Landscape Ecology into Natural Resource Management, J. Liu and W. Taylor, eds. Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, B. J., D. J. Bender, T. A. Contreras, L. Fahrig, and J. F. Wegner. 1999. Testing for habitat detection distances using orientation data. Oikos 84(1): 160-163.

Bender, D. J., T. A. Contreras, and L. Fahrig. 1998. Habitat loss and population decline: a meta-analysis of the patch size effect. Ecology 79(2): 517-533.

LEAF at the University of Florida

Sieving Lab at the University of Florida

Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida