Ian Best – Ph.D (Joined September 2024)

About Ian

Ian joined the McLoughlin Lab at the University of Saskatchewan as a post-doctoral research fellow in September 2024. Ian’s research focuses on the impacts of anthropogenic activity and natural disturbance on fitness and habitat use of woodland caribou. More specifically, he is examining how density of linear features and wildfire affects survivorship, recruitment, and persistence probability of northern populations of woodland caribou. He will also investigate how forecasted changes in climate and natural resource use will influence caribou habitat use. Ian has broad research interests, which include behavioral ecology, animal behavior, wildlife conservation, and agronomy. During his PhD, he focused on how predation risk cues influence the spatial and foraging behavior of small mammals in Taiwan. Ian is originally from Toronto, Ontario, and he completed his BSc in biology at the University of Guelph. His love for travel took him abroad where he completed his MSc in animal ecology at Lund University in Sweden, and his PhD in wildlife ecology at Academia Sinica/ National Taiwan Normal University in Taiwan.