For the next 4.5 years, I’ll be studying the Eastern mallard duck population in Eastern Canada (+ Maine) and in the northeast US. I’m currently a MSc student, but will roll up to a Ph.D. student in Spring 2025. This project will be my dissertation, and also produce other papers throughout the years. Let this summary page explain the overview of what my project is. Later on, as I dive deeper into the project, more pages will probably be added to explain more of my work, especially when papers are published.

So: here’s the tea —> The Eastern mallard population in the northeast USA is declining rapidly: over 39% in the past 25 years whereas the Canadian population (+ Maine) is actually increasing (29% moderate increase). This is an issue, and no, hunting is not the cause of the decline.

To best discover why the population is decreasing so much, it’s my job to compare these two populations to each other and do some detective work. Current hypotheses suggest that there’s a big difference in habitat use and availability, since that hasn’t been studied large scale throughout the Atlantic Flyaway. This population has to be managed due to the important of these ducks as game for hunters (it’s one of the most popular ducks for hunting in the Atlantic Flyway). Currently, bag limits are being imposed on this species due to the decline in population. The goal of this project is to identify differences in the population (whether that be habitat, reproductive success, presence of hybrid ducks, you name it) to inform management to best protect this population.

Although this research project sounds relatively “simple”, it’s not. More than 1100 GPS/ACC transmitter will be attached to female mallards (called hens) to track their breeding locations and develop machine learning techniques to quantify reproductive success. It’s a huge data project, combining multiple models to determine what the problem is within this system. As well as transmitters, I will also be deploying over 1000 geolocators (red bands in the photo below) to measure light levels. With that data, we can actually deduce lat and long, and also see when those mallards are incubating (when mallards incubate, their legs are tucked under their body so the light = 0!).

You can follow the movements of my mallards via this website.

Here’s a simple abstract of my current research to date:

Population change can be driven by one or multiple demographic mechanisms, such as reproductive rate and survival probability during the breeding period. Yet, it is becoming more evident that these mechanisms can be influenced by outside factors that occur throughout the annual cycle of a bird’s life. Investigating these outside factors, such as carry-over effects or environmental conditions, can be done using full annual cycle (FAC) models. With these, we can look at the impact bird movement, proportion of time feeding, and weather conditions have on reproductive success in all three periods of a bird’s breeding season – early incubation, full-term incubation, and brood rearing. Furthermore, these models can help inform conservation plans for populations and species of concern, such as the eastern mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). To do this, I will be deploying ~1100 Global Positioning System-acceleration (GPS-ACC) tracking devices to study the breeding period and population differences among the two subpopulations of eastern mallards. The Canada and Maine population is growing, whereas the northeastern US population is declining. Measuring reproductive success throughout the breeding period by integrating pre-breeding season information, using high-resolution GPS and ACC data will help us gain a better perspective of demographic rates that are inestimable with current age-ratio data, focusing conservation attention to slow or reverse the declining northeastern US subpopulation of eastern mallards.

And lastly, my work could not be done without my amazing collaborators throughout the field. They spend countless hours throughout the winter, scouting sites, baiting traps, and trapping ducks.