Project Description
This summer research opportunity invites one student to investigate how small mammal communities change across seasons in Washington and Lee University’s back campus. Small mammals play critical ecological roles, including as seed dispersers, prey species, ecosystem engineers, and reliable indicators of habitat quality. However, their behavior, detectability, and distribution shift markedly throughout the year. Understanding these seasonal dynamics is essential for interpreting community structure, assessing environmental change, and informing long-term conservation or management decisions on campus lands. The selected student will deploy motion-activated camera traps across a variety of microhabitats to document species presence, relative abundance, and habitat use during the summer months. This work will provide a warm-season dataset that complements existing fall and winter camera-trap surveys on campus. While collecting and organizing the summer dataset is a priority, the student will have the freedom to design an independent project tailored to their own interests. Potential avenues include comparing summer observations to patterns from other seasons on campus, examining how weather or vegetation structure influences detection rates, evaluating spatial differences across back-campus habitats, or exploring behavioral activity patterns captured on camera. This project is ideal for students interested in ecology, conservation biology, or field-based research and offers the chance to generate original insights into the seasonal rhythms of a local small-mammal community.
Prerequisites
The student should have completed BIOL 245 or have experience using camera traps. The student should also either have their own vehicle or be willing to get certified to use the campus vehicles.
Special Comments
The student should be available during the last week of the spring term for the first round of camera deployments.
Project Information (subject to change)
Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026
Estimated End Date: 8/14/2026
Estimated Project Duration: 10 weeks
Maximum Number of Students Sought: 1
Research Location: On campus
Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )
Contact Information: Jacob Kraus (email: jkraus@wlu.edu)