Research Assistant Professor
Serving Since
Whitney was born and raised just north of San Francisco, California. She earned her BA from Harvard University in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology in 2017, and her PhD from the University of California Santa Cruz in Environmental Studies in 2024. For her doctorate, Whitney conducted research on the territoriality and socioecology of the African wild dog in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. She has a broad interest in behavioral ecology, but enjoys focusing on the impacts of conspecifics, anthropogenic disturbance, and internal states on animal movement decisions and space use. She now turns her attention to South Texas, where she plans to broaden her research portfolio to consider physiological mechanisms driving movement decisions in extreme environmental conditions, and the consequences of predator-prey interactions on densities and populations of white-tailed deer.
Visit Whitney's website at www.kwhitneyhansen.com.