Jason Townsend
jatownse@syr.edu

607-539-6189

Jason & daughter Ava

I am a Ph.D. student in the Conservation Biology program and an EPA-STAR Fellow.  My research focuses on the factors that limit survival of the Bicknell’s Thrush, a migratory songbird of conservation concern.  I do research on both the species’ winter grounds in the Dominican Republic and on its breeding grounds in the Catskill Mountains.  In the Catskills, my research focuses on the extent to which mercury is accumulating in the terrestrial food chain, and potentially becoming concentrated in Bicknell’s Thrushes and other forest-dwelling thrushes.  I am currently collecting samples of soils, leaves, leaf litter, insects that live in the leaf litter, salamanders that eat the insects of the leaf litter, and blood samples from birds that consume both insects and salamanders.  In this way I will be able to identify the amount of “biomagnification” in the forest – the extent to which any mercury that is deposited by rainfall is increasingly concentrated in organisms higher and higher on the food chain. The study takes place at multiple elevations, from the banks of the Ashokan Reservoir at 600’ elevation to the headwater streams at the top of the Catskill’s highest peaks at >4000’.