Nicole Gorman is a spatial ecologist and PhD student in the WERC Lab at Virginia Tech. Through her research, she aims to answer questions about animal movement and the intraspecific variation in movement behaviors found within animal populations and apply these answers to further conservation goals.

 

The focus of Nicole's dissertation is to improve methods of modeling wildlife corridors using GPS data from bobcats and black bears throughout mixed-use landscapes in Virginia to promote functional habitat connectivity. She is developing a novel corridor modeling framework using concepts from animal movement and landscape ecology to better reflect animal perception of landscapes and the heterogeneity found within them to create more effective corridors.

 

Additionally, Nicole is evaluating bobcat and bear spatial personalities to account for individual variation within the populations in corridor modeling. She is also using movement behaviors from these spatial personalities to test the Niche Variation Hypothesis.