Erik Schoenborn

Schoenborn began his graduate research in 2022 studying with Dr. Anna Chalfoun at the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the University of Wyoming Department of Zoology and Physiology. He is broadly interested in how animals perceive and select resources on the landscape and the extent to which they can adjust behaviors to navigate novel habitat characteristics introduced by human disturbances.

For his PhD project he is studying habitat selection based spatial trade-offs, site fidelity, and full annual cycle spatial use of Loggerhead Shrikes nesting in sagebrush steppe habitats disturbed by energy development. Additionally, he examines how fine-scale habitat heterogeneity influences inter-annual nest site selection in songbirds and how keystone habitat elements influence landscape level biodiversity across multiple taxa.

In addition to his dissertation research, he is eager to contribute to the broader wildlife conservation community by developing and contributing to outreach and education events. To that end, he has worked with friends and colleagues to develop a new migration monitoring bird banding station that offered internship opportunities to undergraduate students and experiential learning to youth. In that same vein, help helped develop two new community outreach programs designed to promote avian appreciation and conservation beyond academia.