Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment
Institute for Sustainable Systems and Technologies
Institute for Sustainable Systems and Technologies
Dr
Wayne GetzDepartment of Environmental Science, Policy and
Management
University of California at Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Research Interests
Students and postdoctoral students in my laboratory work on a broad
range of theoretical and applied questions in population biology
(ecology, epidemiology, evolution) and social behavior.
Current Projects
At this time projects in my laboratory include:
(i) A GIS and population ecology analysis of census data from the Kruger
National Park in South Africa
(ii) Modeling the interaction between elephants and vegetation in the
Kruger National Park
(iii) A comparative study of the social impacts of transboundary natural
resource management in southern Africa
(iv) The effects of reintroduced wolves on scavenger complexes in the
Yellowstone Park ecosystem
(v) Kinship and rearing behavior in the elephants of Samburu, Kenya
(vi) Epidemiological aspects of bovine tuberculosis in Kruger Park
buffalo
(vii) Sexual networks and the spread of AIDS, particularly in southern
Africa
(viii) The application of network theory to understanding spatial and
transmission related components of epidemics.
The development of new telemetry and computer mapping
technologies are facilitating the collection and management of large
ecological data sets pertaining to the movement of individuals and the
heterogeneity of populations over time and space. Here I present two new
methods for analyzing such data: the first a generalization of the
pair-wise correlation of two measurements to n measurements in time or
over space (Getz 2003), and the second a new method for constructing
home ranges or population utilization distributions on a landscape (Getz
and Wilmers, 2004). I then apply these techniques to an analysis of
social structure in elephants (Wittemyer et al, in press), and to
interpreting movement patterns of wolves in Yellowstone National Park,
USA, as well as the distribution of ungulates in the Kruger National
Park, South Africa.
Getz, W. M. 2003. Correlative coherence analysis: variation from
intrinsic and extrinsic sources in competing populations. Theoretical
Pop Biol, 64:89-99
Getz W. M. and C. C. Wilmers, 2004. A local nearest-neighbor convex-hull
construction of home ranges and utilization distributions. Ecography 27:
489-505
Wittemyer, G., I. Douglas-Hamilton and W. M. Getz, in press. The
socio-ecology of elephants: analysis of the processes creating
multi-tiered social structures. Animal Behavior
