Amy Dunham headshot

WEBSITE(S)| https://biosciences.rice.edu/people/amy-dunham

Mentored presenters may have participated in these courses

EBIO 306, EBIO 403/404

Student Project Titles List

Relationship Between Social Networks and Vigilance Behavior in Captive Slender-Tailed Meerkats, Suricata suricatta

Object curiosity in orangutans Pongo abelii, P. pygmaeus: relation to tool use

Guava Invasion Endangers Epiphytes in a Diverse Tropical Forest

Influence of Defaunation in the Amazon Basin on Genetic and Spatial Characteristics in Hyperabundant Animal-Dispersed Neotropical Palm, Euterpe precatoria

Ophyrocystis elektroscirrha in Houston's resident monarch population: rates of infection and testing safe rearing protocols

Boat strike trends and reporting errors in south Florida marine turtles

Research Areas

My research program is broadly concerned with tropical community ecology with a focus on identifying mechanisms important for structuring forest communities and dynamics and how such mechanisms can be used to guide conservation management actions. I am particularly interested in the impacts of anthropogenic pressures including defaunation, invasion and habitat fragmentation on species interactions, communities and ecosystem processes. The goal of my work is to provide novel insights for our understanding of how complex communities and ecosystems work and how they might respond to anthropogenic pressures. My work also touches on the evolutionary and behavioral ecology of mammals and birds and has challenged some long-standing theories in the field, especially as related to primates. I employ a variety of tools to address these research areas including observation, field experiments, large database manipulations, phylogenetic analyses, and modeling which have allowed me to approach questions from different perspectives and at different scales of organization.