All about monsters

With increasing development pressure in the American Southwest, land management officials in St. George, UT require up-to-date assessments of Gila monster distribution and habitat use to guide long-term management. During the 2025 active season (April–July), my team and I completed 500 time-constrained transect surveys across six sites in St. George. Using R (spOccupancy, unmarked, and sf packages), I'm constructing occupancy models that estimate site-level use and detection probability across the landscape.
Link to thesis presentation (.pdf)

As part of a 10-year study in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, we are examining key aspects of Gila monster ecology including home-range size, diet, habitat selection, and intraspecific interactions. Using traditional field-tracking techniques (e.g., body prints, scat, and tracks in sand dunes), individuals have been identified by their unique dorsal patterns and monitored with DSLR cameras and wildlife camera traps. For this project, I'm conducting seasonal home-range analyses using both Minimum Convex Polygons (MCP) and kernel density estimators (KDE), and applying a hierarchical habitat-selection framework to evaluate landscape-level selection, individual seasonal home-ranges, and fine-scale resource use. Future analyses will expand on this framework to investigate diet composition, shelter use patterns, and how these behaviors vary across environmental gradients.