Information for Prospective Lab Members
If you are a highly motivated undergrad or prospective MSc or PhD student and are excited about wildlife research in behavioural ecology, ecophysiology and/or conservation biology I’d love to hear from you. I am especially interested in students with (or eligible for) NSERC CGS or other scholarship support. Grades are important but I place just as much emphasis on attitude, work ethic, quantitative skills and enthusiasm. If this sounds like you, email me your CV or resume, an unofficial transcript and a paragraph explaining your interest in doing research in the lab.
Current Lab Members
Research Coordinator
Kaleigh Norquay, M.Sc.
Kaleigh has been working in the lab since 2008 in various capacities, including as an Honours and MSc student. She has investigated the hibernation phenology and long-distance movements of little brown bats and modeled survival estimates for bats with White-Nose Syndrome. Her current role involves coordinating field research, administrative support and public outreach.
Post-Doctoral Researchers
Alicia Korpach, Ph.D.
Alicia completed her PhD at the University of Manitoba in 2023 on the effects of natural and artificial light on the migratory patterns of the eastern Whip-poor-will. She then joined both the UofWinnipeg Bat Lab and the Bat and Bird Lab at the University of Regina as a Post-Doc to apply her skills with nocturnal migrants to questions about winter-summer movements of endangered bats in central Canada.
Quinn Fletcher, Ph.D.
Quinn is a Research Associate with the University of Winnipeg Bat lab. In his research, he tests the efficacy and practicality of conservation actions that aim to help bats recover from the fungal disease called white nose syndrome. Moreover, he in interested in how the timing of hibernation fits in with the life-history of bats. As a part of the Neighbourhood Bat Watch team, Quinn enjoys sharing his passion for bats and science with the citizen scientist participants of this program.
M.Sc. Students
Lilee Donahue, B.Sc. Hons
We've recently found that, during fall as bats prepare for hibernation, some roost in natural structures close to hibernation sites. These roosts will be extremely important for helping bats save energy during the day so they can build fat reserves for hibernation. Lilee is conducting an experiment to test if providing extra, high quality roosts close to a hibernaculum can help bats build larger fat reserves and better survive winter with white-nose syndrome.
Malcolm Reimer, B.Sc., NSERC Canada Graduate Scholar
Malcolm Reimer is using a combination of temperature radiotelemetry and recordings from infrared camera traps to test hypotheses about late winter energetics of hibernating bats. His work is important for understanding why bats hibernate in compact huddles or "cuddles" (as Craig likes to say) and how cuddling influences energy expenditure.
Pranav Sadana, B.Sc. Hons, Research Manitoba Scholar
Pranav joined the lab as a research assistant in 2021 before starting his masters in 2022. He completed his undergrad from University of Toronto with double majors in Animal Physiology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with a minor in Mathematics. For his masters, Pranav is studying physiological and behavioural mechanisms that help little brown bats accumulate fall fat reserves.
Anouska Agarwal, B.Tech., U. of Winnipeg Graduate Scholar
Anouska, co-supervised by Dr. Anuraag Shrivastav, is using a combination of bioinformatics and field sampling of plasma from bats to identify and understand the role of microRNAs in white-nose syndrome. MicroRNAs are small strands of RNA that have a big influence on physiological pathways and gene expression. They are widely studied in human disease research but have received much less attention in wildlife disease.
Undergraduate Students
Taylor Cangemi
Between commitments as a varsity volleyball star, Taylor has worked in the lab as a research assistant and directed studies student on a range of projects. She is currently working on an analysis comparing error rates for two mark-recapture techniques used with bats to improve our ability to estimate population parameters.
Former Lab Members
Lab Manager
Heather Mayberry
Heather was with us for two years as our fearless Lab Manager. Heather studied at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON with Dr. Paul Faure. For her master's work, Heather researched the development of frequency modulated vocalizations in big brown bat pups. Heather completed her Ph.D. in 2019 with Dr. John Ratcliffe at the University of Toronto Erindale.
Post-Doctoral Researchers
Yvonne Dzal, Ph.D., Liber Ero Post-Doctoral Fellow
Yvonne completed her Ph.D. at UBC in 2018 studying mechanisms that allow some animals, including bats and naked mole rats, to cope with low oxygen conditions. She has helped pioneer methods for understanding cutaneous gas exchange in mammals and is an expert in thermoregulation and energy balance in small-bodied animals and is now bringing this expertise to the study of disease mechanisms in WNS. Yvonne is now a faculty member at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.
Christina Davy, Ph.D. (Liber Ero Post-Doctoral Fellow)
Christina uses a combination of molecular and field studies to study the conservation needs of threatened species and populations, and to understand how behavior affects genetic diversity in small populations. Her Ph.D. thesis focused on conservation genetics of freshwater turtles. Christina’s Post-Doctoral research investigated the genetic response of North American bats to white-nose syndrome, and the population structure of two common bat species across Canada. Christina is now a faculty member at Carlton University.
Liam McGuire, Ph.D. (NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow)
Liam is broadly interested in how animals cope with situations of energy limitation. For his Ph.D. research, Liam studied the ecophysiology of bat migration. His post-doctoral research addressed questions of hibernation physiology in North American and European bats, and the implications for white-nose syndrome. He is now a faculty member at the University of Waterloo.
Lisa Warnecke, Ph.D. (Government of Canada Post-Doctoral Research Fellow)
Lisa earned her Ph.D. studying thermoregulation and torpor in small marsupials in Australia and won a prestigious Government of Canada PDRF to apply her expertise in ecophysiology, thermoregulation and behaviour to questions about white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats.
James Turner, Ph.D.
James (shown here with his field assistant) was an Australia Ph.D. import who completed his thesis on thermoregulation in pygmy possums in 2010. He used his experience with open-flow respirometry and energetics to address physiological effects of WNS in bats.
Mary Timonin, Ph.D.
Mary completed her Ph.D. on the neuroendocrine basis of paternal behaviour at Queen's University in 2008 and worked on a range of projects in the lab as a Post-Doc from testing the efficacy of thermal refuge sites as a possible mitigation for white-nose syndrome to addressing links between animals’ individual “personalities”, energetics and physiological stress. She has since been a NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow at Cornell University, completed the DVM program at the University of Saskatchewan.
Ph. D. Student
Mary-Anne Collis
MAC is a UK import who has traveled widely across the globe studying various species and aspects of conservation and behavioural ecology. She joined our lab as a Ph.D. student working on the pre- and post- white-nose syndrome (WNS) survival and movement of little brown bats assessed using PIT-tags and remote data logging systems. See her website here.
Masters' Students
Ershiya Bagheri
Ershiya joined the lab in the fall of 2020 all the way from Iran. She completed her Bachelors in Microbiology with Honours. For her MSc project, Ershiya used radio-telemetry to identify critical summer habitats of endangered little brown bats in Northwestern Ontario.
Sophia Brown
Sophia completed her Bachelors in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology with a minor in wildlife science in Purdue University. She joined the bat lab in the spring of 2020 and studied the movement and behavior of little brown bats in the fall and spring shoulder-seasons.
Alyssa Stulberg
Alyssa joined the lab after completing her undergraduate work at the University of Regina. She led a large collaborative project with researchers from the U.S. and Canada to test approaches for reducing the environmental load of the WNS fungus in hibernation sites of endangered bats.
Kristina Muise
Kristina completed her B.Sc. Honours in the lab in 2014 studying the pre-hibernation foraging behavior in a northern population of little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) and, after several years of working in the veterinary profession in Manitoba, has returned to complete her M.Sc. She studied the hibernation behaviour and physiology in big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) to understand resistance mechanisms to white-nose syndrome in this species.
Nicole Dorville
Nicole was a long-distance import from Singapore, where she worked in the zoo and freshwater entomology research (at separate times). She also studied wildlife conservation biology in Melbourne, and has experience in rehabilitating captive injured bats. Her work at UWinnipeg involved crucial experiments with captive bats to understand disease mechanisms associated with white-nose syndrome and test potential treatments for the disease.
Trevor Moore
Trevor joined the lab in Fall of 2016. He is from southern Utah, where he graduated with a Bachelors in Biology and a minor in chemistry. His main area of focus was ecology, and studied prey selection in garter snakes and sound differences in hissing cockroaches. In the Bat Lab he studied summer torpor expression in little brown bats and recovery of bats from WNS.
Ana Breit
Ana joined the lab in 2015 from Wisconsin where she studied biology and wildlife ecology research and management. She also dabbled in microeconomics, which she hopes to apply to animal behavior with respect to social interactions. With the Willis lab, Ana studied how social group composition, weather, and resource abundance affect pathogen transmission. Ana moved to Orono, Maine in 2018 to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Maine and is now a Research Scientist with the Duke Lemur Center at Duke University.
Andrew Habrich
Andrew joined the lab in 2016 after graduating with a BSc honours in ecology from Concordia University in Montréal. He has an interest in interdisciplinary studies in science and hopes to apply this knowledge to conservation biology. For his project, Andrew studied how torpor expression in the fall and spring, as well as environmental variables, affect overwintering survival in little brown bats across different hibernacula. In 2020, Andrew moved to pursue a Ph.D. at Carleton University.
Quinn Webber
Alana Wilcox
Zenon Czenze
Nadine Price
Allyson Menzies
Felix Martinez-Nunez
Kristin Jonasson
Joel Jameson
Tracie Parkinson
Alana Wilcox
Zenon Czenze
Nadine Price
Allyson Menzies
Felix Martinez-Nunez
Kristin Jonasson
Joel Jameson
Tracie Parkinson
Honours' Students
Fiona McNicol
Daxton Sosinkalo
Haven Soto
Lauren Nash
Sarah Teillet
Emma Kunkel
Amie Peterson
Emily Beaton
Dylan Baloun
Shelby Bohn
Chantal Carriere
Amanda Matheson
Scott Unruh
Daxton Sosinkalo
Haven Soto
Lauren Nash
Sarah Teillet
Emma Kunkel
Amie Peterson
Emily Beaton
Dylan Baloun
Shelby Bohn
Chantal Carriere
Amanda Matheson
Scott Unruh
