Communications

Associate Professor

College of Sciences and Mathematics - Biology

Bio

Dr. Jen Maresh's research interests are within the field of animal bioenergetics, which is an understanding of how energy flows through living systems from ingestion of prey up through the building of an animal and its offspring. Her recent work has focused on the decisions animals make while foraging, and the energetic costs and pay-offs of those decisions under both natural and 'disturbed' conditions, as a way of understanding how resilient they might be to a rapidly changing environment. Most of Maresh's work has centered around marine mammals as apex marine predators, and phocid seals in particular, although she has worked with a number of species including bottlenose dolphins, northern right whales, northern elephant seals and Weddell seals.

While Maresh continues to study marine mammals, the subject matter of her current projects are more broadly comparative, focusing on large-scale patterns of mammalian bioenergetics. In addition to continued work with marine mammals, her lab has started a new research program directed at comparing the eco-physiological roles of terrestrial mesopredators between intact ecosystems and those from which the apex predators have been removed.

Education

• B.S., West Chester University
• M.E.M., Duke University
• Ph.D., University of California Santa Cruz
• Postdoctoral researcher, University of California Santa Cruz