Virginia Bear Mange Study
Meet The VBMS Team
Principle Investigators
Brett Jesmer, PhD
WERC Lab Principle Investigator
Assistant Professor
Virginia Tech Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Dr. Brett Jesmer's Wildlife Ecology, Restoration, and Conservation (WERC) Lab at Virginia Tech partners with state and federal agencies as well as NGO and community-based organizations to identify key conservation concerns. He has conducted extensive research in the field of movement ecology on a wide variety of species.
Marcella Kelly, PhD
WHAPA Lab Principle Investigator
Professor
Virginia Tech Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Dr. Marcella Kelly specializes in estimating population sizes of difficult to track species. She designed the hair-snare, mark-recapture part of the project for estimating bear densities in areas with and without sarcoptic mange, which infects black bears. Collected bear hairs will get analyzed genetically down to individual bear!
Graduate Students
Fang Chen
PhD Student, WERC Lab
Department of Fish & Wildlife Conservation
Fang is a PhD student in the WERC lab at Virginia Tech working on the Virginia Bear Mange Study. Her research will focus on the impact of sarcoptic mange on American black bears at both individual and population levels in Virginia.
Bella Sciarrino
MS Student, WHAPA Lab
Department of Fish & Wildlife Conservation
Bella is a master’s student in the WHAPA lab researching how certain landscape variables are influencing black bear mange occurrence in Virginia using an occupancy framework. She is examining the effectiveness of our hair snaring methodology in an area with high mange prevalence. Her research aims to contribute to the sparse literature on black bear mange and help inform management decisions on Virginia’s black bear population.
Madison Thurber
MS Student, WHAPA Lab
Department of Fish & Wildlife Conservation
Madison is a master's student in the WHAPA lab. Her research focuses on estimating black bear densities in the Appalachian and Blue Ridge Mountains through spatially-explicit, mark-recapture analysis using DNA from hair samples collected at barbed-wire corral traps (i.e., hair snares). She'll be assessing the impact of sarcoptic mange on bear population density by comparing areas with, and without, sarcoptic mange detected.
Brogan Holcombe
PhD Student, WERC Lab
Geospatial & Environmental Analysis Program
Brogan is a PhD Student in the WERC Lab studying the behavioral ecology of black bears in Virginia. She will be using accelerometry data from her master's research in the WHAPA Lab to build behavioral classification models (like a Fitbit for bears) from camera collars for black bears to better understand how bears are using the landscape. See more about her research with tri-axial accelerometers here!
Virginia DWR Staff
Carl Tugend
Virginia State Bear Project Leader
Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources
Carl previously worked as a Regional Wildlife Biologist with Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Throughout his time in Maine, he worked with bear, deer, turkey, and moose in one of Maine's coastal regions. Carl dreamed of working with bears and jumped at the opportunity when offered the position of Bear Project lead for Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources over three years ago.
Katie Martin
Deer, Bear, Turkey Biologist
Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources
As the Deer-Bear-Turkey biologist Katie works across the 3 big game program areas statewide focusing on human-wildlife conflict, disease, and population monitoring. As the DWR liaison for the bear mange study Katie gets to work with the VT team on project design/logistics, field work, and additional data needs or consultation throughout the project!
John Tracey, DVM
State Wildlife Veterinarian
Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources
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