Jake Ferguson | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Jake Ferguson

Assistant Professor

Contact Information

jake.ferguson@uky.edu

319 T.H Morgan Building

Research Interests

Quantitative biology
Population ecology
Predator-prey ecology

Affiliations

Biology
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Lab website
Google scholar

Current projects

Stochastic population dynamics. One of my current research problems is understanding the stochastic properties of animal populations. Stochastic models are used to forecast the risk of a population falling below a critical threshold and can be applied even when we have very little direct information on the causes of population fluctuations. This makes this modeling approach a powerful conservation tool. We are currently working on a class of models that predict population fluctuations may actually decrease when environmental fluctuations grow larger. Our goal is to understand this counterintuitive phenomenon and develop the tools to study the phenomenon empirically.
Optimal survey design. This research has focused on designing survey strategies inspired by the strategies that predators use to look for prey. Our work shows that the search for prey by predators can be used as a model for understanding animal abundance survey techniques. However, there also can be important differences as well because past results from foraging theory have had difficulty accounting for uncertainty in the detection of prey, a critical component of many survey techniques.
Group size scaling. Empirical studies that are able to assess the impacts of predators on prey populations in their natural environment are difficult due to the inherent difficulties of observing infrequent events. We are developing a modeling approach that links commonly collected survey data on social predators to their trophic impacts on prey. The approach predicts that the predator group size will exhibit a power-law scaling relationship with predator abundance. This relationship can be used to predict how the strength of a predator-prey interaction will weaken with predator abundance without any explicit data on the prey. We exhibit the approach on a few example systems to look for evidence of power-law scaling relationships and discuss their potential impacts in these systems.

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Hopkins, J.B., Ferguson, J.M., Fredrick, C., Jerina, K. (2021) Measuring the impact of corn on mammalian omnivores. Journal of Mammology. 102(1): 270–282. link.

Johnson-Bice, S.M., Ferguson, J.M., Erb, J.D., Gable, T.D., Windels, S.K. (2021) Ecological forecasts reveal limitations of common model selection methods: predicting changes in beaver colony densities. Ecological Applications. 31(1). link.

Elbroch, M., Ferguson, J.M, Witmer, H. (2020) Reintroduced wolves and hunting limit the abundance of a subordinate apex predator in a multi-use landscape. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 287(1938) link.

Archmiller, A. A., Johnson, A., Nolan, J., Edwards, M., Elliott, L., Ferguson, J.M., Iannarilli , F., Velez, J., Vitense, K., Johnson, D., Fieberg, J. (2020) Computational reproducibility in The Wildlife Society’s flagship journals. Journal of Wildlife Management. 84(5): 1012-1017. link.

Ferguson, J.M., Taper, M.L., Zenil-Ferguson, R.T., Jasieniuk, M., and Maxwell, B.D. Incorporating parameter estimability into model selection. (2019) Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 7. link.

Ferguson, J.M., McCartney, M.A., Blinick, N.S., Schroeder, L., Fieberg, J. (2019) Using distance sampling to estimate densities of Zebra Mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) in early-stage invasions. Freshwater Science. 38(4): 856-868. link.