Madagascar Carnivores Focus of NSF Funded Student Research

Brian Gerber has combined his passions for travel and wildlife research by working as a wildlife research technician in Thailand, Angola, South Africa, and across the United States. Now, with a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the master’s degree candidate in fisheries and wildlife sciences is leading his own research project — studying carnivores in Madagascar. The fellowship provides three years of funding support to graduate students in disciplines relevant to the mission of the National Science Foundation.

Gerber has served as a graduate teaching assistant with Sarah Karpanty, assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife sciences, doing research on shorebirds on Virginia’s Barrier Islands with a Sigma Xi grant. Gerber is spending six months in Madagascar this year, using trail cameras to research habitat preferences and estimate populations of four carnivores: fossa, Malagasy civet, ring-tailed mongoose, and broad-striped mongoose. He is based at the international research station, Centrel Valbio, and Ranamofana National Park and is coordinating with another Virginia Tech graduate student, Mary Kotschwar, who is studying anti-predator behavior of lemurs in the same area.

11/25/08