Postgraduate Students

Rachel Buxton is a PhD candidate from Vancouver, Canada. She is an avid traveller and loves seabird biology because it takes her to some of the most amazing far-reaching places in the world (like New Zealand)! She conducted her MSc research through Memorial University of Newfoundland and her fieldwork in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Her research focused on the use of passive acoustic monitoring as a tool to examine nocturnal seabird abundances on remote, hard-to-reach islands. Specifically, Rachel was interested in how nocturnal burrow-nesting seabirds (storm-petrels, Ancient Murrelets, and Cassin`s Auklets) were recovering after the removal of introduced Arctic Foxes. She compared call activity between a control island (predator free) and a chronosequence of predator-eradicated islands. Besides bioacoustics, Rachel is also interested in island restoration techniques, such as social attraction and translocation. She has fallen deeply in love with seabirds and seabird islands, and hopes to dedicate the rest of her life to studying them.

Her PhD research focuses on the spatio-temporal patterns of seabird colony recovery on New Zealand offshore islands after predator removal and the implications for long-term monitoring and management.

Publications:

Buxton, R.T. and I.L. Jones. In Press. An experimental study of social attraction in two species of storm-petrel using acoustic and olfactory cues. The Condor.

Buxton, R.T. and I.L. Jones. 2012. Measuring nocturnal seabird activity and status using acoustic recording devices: applications for island restoration. Journal of Field Ornithology 83(1):47?60.

Buxton, R.T. 2010. Monitoring and managing recovery of nocturnal burrow-nesting seabird populations on recently predator-eradicated Aleutian Islands. MSc Thesis. Memorial University of Newfoundland. St. John?s. 183 pp.

Major, H.L., Buxton, R.T, and Jones, I.L. 2010. Evaluating the feasibility of Crested Auklet enhancement via habitat restoration at Gareloi Island, Aleutian Islands. Unpublished Report for Keesal, Young, & Logan and Polaris Applied Sciences, 48 pp.

Williams, J., Drummond, B., and Buxton, R.T. 2010. Effects of the August 2008 volcanic eruption on breeding birds and marine mammals at Kasatochi Island, Alaska. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 42 (3): 306-314.

Website: http://rachelbuxton.wordpress.com/publications/