Kim Ledger
Kim arrived at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in fall 2022. Kim’s primary project with the Genetics Program at Auke Bay Lab is to understand changing species distributions in the Arctic and Bering Sea using environmental DNA. Broadly, her research interests include developing and utilizing genetic tools to understand impacts of global change on biodiversity and ecosystems. Kim received her Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida in the summer of 2022. Her dissertation focused on how working landscapes and defaunation impact the occurrence and abundance of important tick species. She combined field-based observational and experimental studies with molecular techniques to better understand the impacts of our changing world on ticks and tick-borne pathogens.