Anna Kase, Ph.D.

About

Anna has always had a passion for animals and knew she wanted to work with wildlife. In college she studied zoology at Northern Michigan University. As a student, she had fantastic opportunities to study wildlife. Anna participated in a field-based herpetology class on the coastal plain and was a Nature Boardwalk Intern at Lincoln Park Zoo.

After graduating, Anna went on to earn her Ph.D. at the University of South Dakota. She studied the impacts of anthropogenic modifications to the landscape—such as dams, chemical contaminants, and invasive species—on freshwater turtle distribution, behavior, and natural history. During her Ph.D. studies, Anna also became interested in how mathematical approaches can be used to answer biological questions.

As the Post-Doctoral Researcher for the Urban Wildlife Institute, Anna is working on using modeling techniques to understand the relationship between environmental variables and wildlife occupancy and distribution in urban areas.

Anna’s research interests include landscape and aquatic ecology, herpetology, and ecotoxicology; wildlife habitat use along urban gradients; and wildlife responses to landscape modification, particularly in aquatic ecosystems.