Hila Shamon is a landscape ecologist and mammalogist at Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Conservation Ecology Center. Shamon’s research interests focus on anthropogenic activity and landuse changes effects on terrestrial mammals’ distribution and densities across large landscape gradients. Shamon uses a multi-species, multi-trophic approach to answer local- and landscape-level questions that unveil mechanistic processes and cascading processes, combining several modeling methodologies, and collects data from the field using camera traps, audio recordings, GPS tags and aerial image processing.
RESEARCH
Gains and Losses of Bird Functional Traits in Relation to Human Habitation
It is well established that anthropogenic activities alter natural habitats, ultimately leading to biodiversity loss. However, how landuse and landcover changes affect ecosystem functionality is
Swift Fox Reintroduction
Over the last year and a half I’ve been working with the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation to establish a swift fox reintroduction project to the
LoRa Technology for Wildlife Tracking
New communications technology has made it possible to track fine-scale movements of wildlife, enabling researchers to understand the factors that influence local and migratory movements
UPDATES
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Swift Fox Recovery Program
January 7, 2021Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute is collaborating with Fort Belknap Indian Community on a five-year reintroduction program
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Bison Behavior Study
November 6, 2020
Claire Bresnan shares her experience about her field work bison observations surveys at American Prairie Reserve
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Swift Fox Return After 50 Years
September 24, 2020
After an absence of more than 50 years, the swift fox has returned to the grasslands of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana.
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Recent Publications
Paraskevopoulou, Z.*, Shamon, H.*, Songer, M., Ruxton, G., McShea, WJ., Habitat quality is important when assessing habitat suitability for mesocarnivore reintroductions – swift fox case study. Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation. In Press.
Shamon, H., Paraskevopoulou, Z., Kitzes, J., Card, E., Deichmann, JL., Boyce, A., McShea, MJ. 2020 Using ecoacoustics metrices to track grassland bird richness across landscape gradients, Ecological Indicators, Volume 120, 2021, 106928, ISSN 1470-160X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106928
Maor, M., Shamon, H., Dolev, A., Reichman, A., Bar David, S. and Saltz, D. 2020. Long‐term re‐evaluation of spatially explicit models as a means for adaptive wildlife management. Ecol Appl. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1002/eap.2088