A fascinating conversation with Taal Levi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University.

Taal is a geneticist and ecologist with a broad research focus including assessing the ecological consequences of wildlife over-exploitation, fisheries management, the ecology and conservation of predators, disease ecology, and population dynamics in a changing climate.

Our conversation moved through several interesting research topics including how DNA techniques are re-writing our understanding of species' natural history; DNA bar-coding; studying the rare Humboldt marten; brown bears, rodents, and seed dispersal; passenger pigeons; recovering extinct species; the ecology of Lyme disease; trophic cascades, and more!

Links for listeners:

USFWS proposal to list the Humboltd marten as Threatened under the ESA: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-10-09/pdf/2018-21794.pdf

James Estes book on trophic cascades

https://www.amazon.com/Trophic-Cascades-Predators-Changing-Dynamics/dp/1597264873

James Estes memoir Serendipity: An Ecologist's Quest to Understand Nature

https://www.amazon.com/Serendipity-Ecologists-Understand-Organisms-Environments/dp/0520285034

Estes et al. paper on trophic downgrading

https://people.clas.ufl.edu/rdholt/files/255.pdf