Meet the New Everglades Research Station Director, Bryant Dossman, PhD

In 2026, Bryant Dossman, PhD, joined Audubon as the brand new director and principal scientist of the Audubon Everglades Analysis Station (AERS) in Tavernier. Hailing from Newark, New Jersey, his “spark” birds had been the Home Sparrows that had been frequent within the neighborhood the place he grew up.

We sat down with Bryant to study extra about his background and what bought him enthusiastic about working at Audubon Florida.

Q: At Audubon, we like to ask: What was your flight path? What introduced you to Audubon Florida?

A: I’ve been getting ready for a possibility like this for years, and I really feel so fortunate to be an ornithologist right here at this historic analysis station. What a tremendous place to be. I’m excited to comply with within the footsteps of my predecessors, significantly Robert Porter Allen, whose research of Bald Eagles, California Condors, and Whooping Cranes had been groundbreaking.

Throughout my undergraduate research at Bowdoin Faculty in Maine, I bought a style of what a life in science may appear like by engaged on a long-term Savannah Sparrow research at Kent Island, which set me on my present trajectory. I went on to get my M.Sc. from The Ohio State College, the place I met my future spouse (and present Nationwide Audubon Society workers member) Alicia Brunner. I ultimately went to Jamaica for my Ph.D. at Cornell College, the place I targeted on the wintering ecology of American Redstarts.

Earlier than becoming a member of the Audubon flock, I held a postdoctoral place at Georgetown College and a analysis affiliate appointment on the Smithsonian Migratory Fowl Heart.  I believe I’ll slot in effectively right here due to my background in avian habits, motion, and inhabitants ecology.

Q: What do you see as a future focus of Audubon’s Everglades Analysis Station?

A: Audubon has spent a variety of time on wading fowl populations right here, which have been excellent indicators of what’s going on within the ecosystem from an Everglades restoration perspective. We plan to proceed this long-term analysis, contributing information of the success of Everglades restoration tasks.  One other facet I plan to research is the land fowl group that additionally depends on the restoration efforts within the Everglades however makes use of the setting in barely other ways than the wading fowl group.

A giant imaginative and prescient of mine is to grasp higher how Everglades restoration efforts are in the end impacting the fowl communities extra holistically. That features the residents and migrant land birds and shorebirds which might be solely right here for just a few months of the yr to the year-round resident wading fowl group.

Understanding particular person motion and inhabitants dynamics is vital to this endeavor as they reply dynamically to the altering ecological circumstances of the Everglades ecosystem and ongoing restoration efforts. To do that, I plan to implement a strong bird-tracking program to raised perceive how environmental circumstances and restoration efforts drive particular person motion and, in the end, scale to have an effect on inhabitants dynamics.

Q: What analysis questions do you hope to reply?

A: There’s a lot we will study habitat connections all through a fowl’s full annual cycle, significantly how environmental circumstances through the nonbreeding season in a single location can carry over to affect breeding effort elsewhere.

I’m excited to study extra about how birds use these habitats, even the birds that we solely see for just a few weeks every season throughout migration. For instance, Japanese Whip-poor-wills that winter right here within the Everglades are largely linked to the northeastern inhabitants, which is among the many most quickly declining. What’s driving that decline?

The Everglades is a large expanse of habitat that is a vital bottleneck for birds coming by the Caribbean to the Florida peninsula. Monitoring knowledge exhibits us that the birds passing by listed below are getting linked to all over the place, from japanese Nova Scotia to even Alaska, so clearly Florida performs an outsized influence on what these birds want throughout migration. However how a lot?

Q: How do you intend to review land birds?

A: One technique to monitor habitat use of uncommon and elusive species is by recording their sounds with acoustic recording items, that are knowledge loggers that continuously file audio knowledge. They may help us higher perceive the place birds are positioned on the panorama, the habitats they use, and the place they aren’t discovered. Importantly, for our wading fowl communities, we will additionally consider the place profitable nesting happens by figuring out the distinctive calls of nestlings and juveniles. The tactic supplies a strong technique to monitor a number of fowl species concurrently, even in essentially the most distant parts of Florida Bay and Everglades.

One other low-cost approach of monitoring birds is to make use of small Motus stations with a single omni antenna. By establishing a community of those receivers, we will accumulate knowledge on fowl presence and absence inside a pair hundred meters of the receiver and perceive how birds transfer throughout distinct panorama options reminiscent of particular person keys and foraging areas for wading birds whereas additionally monitoring the actions of migrants using the Florida Bay seasonally. These knowledge additionally present a method to estimate survival, an vital demographic that’s important for predicting population-level responses. It is simply one other device in our pocket that we will leverage for understanding the habits and inhabitants dynamics of birds inside this ecosystem.

Q: How do you anticipate discovering the sources it’s essential to do that work?

Along with getting science grants and leveraging federal funds, I’ve collaborators throughout the western hemisphere with comparable pursuits that may assist broaden our analysis capability right here. Coupled with our unbelievable boots-on-the-ground analysis crew and native specialists, we will collectively have a huge impact.

Finally, it boils right down to utilizing the information to inform tales. Simply listening to the sounds of a key through the center of the winter season can get somebody excited concerning the work being performed. Fortunately, Audubon Florida and the Nationwide Audubon Society are nice storytellers, in the end serving to flip our science into conservation tales that may get everybody on board with the work we’re doing right here.

Q: How do you envision carrying the Everglades Analysis Station’s legacy ahead into the long run?

A: That is a tremendous place to coach and mentor early-career scientists. They’ll get a historic perspective of the place we’ve got been, a up to date perspective of what we’re doing, and work with us and others to determine the place the science is taking us sooner or later. Lengthy-term techniques are helpful alternatives for mentoring. All components come collectively into an important ecological perspective.

Many present workers members at AERS are early-career scientists. My purpose is to assist them proceed to develop their careers by broadening their skillsets, with hands-on expertise tagging, banding, and monitoring birds and doing common fieldwork to allow them to exit and ask extra questions. I hope to ascertain collaborations with of us at universities to increase our analysis capability and assist broaden the views our analysis crew is uncovered to. Getting extra individuals excited to ask questions is a vital facet of broadening our work.

Q: There’s a lot to do. How do you keep grounded?

A: I used to be fortunate to get out on the water as we speak, and from the second we left the dock, it was nonstop nature: manatees, prey fish, Ospreys perched on markers. It was nice to be on the market, taking a second to decelerate and take into consideration what is occurring throughout us and luxuriate in watching the birds are available to forage when the tide was dropping. Once we are continuously on the go, in conferences, it’s simple to overlook to breathe and replicate on the science behind the questions we’re pursuing. You will need to watch the Prairie Warblers and take a while to suppose. Nature Rx is actual, and it is an vital a part of the scientific course of.