While out counting grass on the savannah, Stephanie Eby Kenya Spring ’01 had a career changing moment.
For the first two and a half years of my undergraduate education at Bates College I took all of the necessary courses for veterinary school and spent my summers volunteering at veterinary hospitals," she said. "However, after spending time with The SFS Center for Wildlife Management in Kenya, all of that changed. Despite my initial naive belief that identifying and counting grass species would be boring, it turned out that I loved that type of field work and I decided that research was for me."
To pursue her newfound passion, Stephanie applied for a graduate degree in biology at the University of Syracuse. She was accepted into a lab that was just starting to conduct research in Tanzania. "My advisor had received funding for a project to be conducted in Serengeti National Park, and having seen in my application that I had studied abroad in Kenya, he thought I would be a good fit."
Stephanie recently defended her doctoral dissertation, presenting research conducted in Serengeti National Park on management-set fires and how they affect the distribution of herbivores and carnivores.
"Park managers in the Serengeti intentionally light fires and burn over one third of the park each year. Although there are multiple reasons for burning, the main ones are to ensure that the grass does not get moribund and to keep fires outside the park from coming in and destroying large sections of the ecosystem.
I discovered that Thomson’s gazelles, wildebeest, impala, warthog, and Grant’s gazelles are attracted to burned areas for the first six months following a fire. The reason for this attraction appears to be twofold. First, the herbivores are attracted to the newer, more nutritious plant growth which sprouts after burning. Second, burning decreases vegetation height thereby increasing sighting distances and reducing cover, making it harder for carnivores to sneak up on the herbivores."
The road to a PhD can be full of potholes, says Stephanie, but a sense of humor and dedication to the project helped her along the way. "Sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh at everything that has gone wrong. Then, afterwards, you need to remind yourself why you are doing this in the first place and continue on down the road."
Stephanie is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at Princeton University. She hopes to be able to continue conducting studies that will lead to informed management of ecosystems allowing for their continued preservation.
