Dr. Volker Bahn
Associate Professor
Department of
Biolocal Sciences
Wright State
University
Biological Sciences I (BS 1) 225C
3640 Colonel Glenn Highway
Dayton, OH 45435, USA
t: (937) 775-4152
f: (937) 775-3320
volker 'dot' bahn 'at' wright 'dot' edu
Map
Postdoc McGill University, 2005-08
Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology, University of Maine, 2005
Dipl.-Biol. (M.Sc. equivalent) in Nature Conservation,
Philipps-University Marburg, 1998
My main interests are Macroecology and Conservation Biology. In particular I'm interested in the spatial patterns in the distribution of abundance of a species across its range. Beyond the influence of the physical environment, I believe that dispersal, population dynamics, and habitat configuration have been underappreciated as major processes influencing distribution patterns. Resulting spatial patterns in species' distributions of abundances, such as spatial autocorrelation, have been underutilized for improving model predictions. My current research aims at a) elucidating these processes and the resulting spatial patterns, and b) creating improved distribution models based on the gained spatial ecological insights.
I began my PhD at the University of Maine under the supervision of Drs. Raymond O'Connor (deceased fall 2005) and William B. Krohn in 2002. In the following 3 years, and after considering widely diverging topics such as scale, limiting vs. correlating effects of resources, population dynamics, and ideal free distribution, I focused on spatial patterns in species distributions and the role of dispersal. To this end I used simulation models programmed in S-PLUS� and empirical analyses on Breeding Bird Survey data. You can download my PhD thesis here. My current research continues many lines of thinking I developed during my PhD program.
I specialized in Nature Conservation for my master's degree (Diplom Hauptstudium) at Philipps-University Marburg, in Germany. During this time my foci were plant ecology and identification, ecology and quantitative analyses, and cultural anthropology. After voluntary research on the marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) on the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia, during which I discovered the first active nest of this bird in Canada, I spent a year at the University of Victoria. My thesis research focused on the ecology and conservation of the marbled murrelet in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. After the completion of my degree, I continued research on this bird for several years with Dr. Alan Burger, University of Victoria, and Trudy Chatwin, B.C. Ministry of Environment. The work culminated in the peer-reviewed book "Multi-Scale Studies of Populations, Distribution and Habitat Associations of Marbled Murrelets in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia."
Personal
I live in Yellow Springs, Ohio with my wife and two children. We love this town and are crazy busy with our new house and getting settled in. Besides spending time with my family, I enjoy bicycling, playing Ultimate, birding, hiking, camping, reading, and debating politics.