WHO WE ARE:

We're located in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. The Warnell School is more than 100 years old, making it the oldest school of Natural Resources in the Southern United States.  Warnell's mission is to prepare leaders in the conservation and sustainability of nature and to discover ways to restore, conserver, and better use natural resources.

Our lab is composed of people with diverse interests, perspectives, and experiences. We come from Maryland, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Oregon, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Nova Scotia (that is in Canada), and India.  We are a close knit group that fosters a highly supportive, collaborative, and productive environment.

Some current and former members of the Maerz Lab at our 2023 "family" renunion.

Some current and former members of the Maerz Lab at the 2019 SEPARC meeting.

WHAT WE DO + WHY WE DO IT:

​We work at the interfaces between organismal, population, and ecosystems ecology in the context of wildlife management. Working at this interface gives us novel perspectives on how human impacts on ecosystem processes affect wildlife, and how the conservation of animals relates back to ecosystem function. We work with state and federal agencies, NGOs, and local communities to embed our research in adaptive management and decision-making frameworks intended to help those partners with their management decisions, actions, and monitoring. Our current key partners include Georgia Department of Natural Resources, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Division, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Alabama Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Units, Georgia Sea Turtle Center, and the Jekyll Island Authority.

Common research themes in our lab are: 

• Population Ecology and Global Change ●
  Understanding patterns in population dynamics along anthropogenic gradients is essential in an era of rapid global change. In our lab, research at the population level often involves the development of demographic models of priority wildlife species or the estimation of the impacts of climate, land use and management, and nonnative species invasions on the ecology of native wildlife.​
• Organisms and Ecosystems ●
  Research at the interface between organismal and ecosystems ecology is challenging. The differing perspectives and methodologies of the two disciplines often do not align or integrate easily. ​We strive to bridge this gap by combining a deep understanding of organismal ecology with a broad appreciation for ecosystem dynamics and collaboration. In our lab, research at this interface often looks like the study of ​how animals influence ecosystem processes like nutrient storage and cycling. This work can sometimes answer the "why does it matter" question when stakeholders want to know the consequences of changes in wildlife abundance.
• Supporting Conservation Management and Decision-Making ● 
  ​Problems related to the conservation and management of biodiversity and ecosystem processes are central to our research.  To this end, we use ecological principles to better understand threats and develop management actions and strategies to mitigate those threats. In our lab, research designed to address conservation and/or management problems often looks like ​the application of ecological principles to develop management techniques or the development of decision models to inform the conservation and management of wildlife.​

​Though we have worked on a wide variety of organisms and issues, from birds and butterflies to terrapins and tortoises, we predominantly focus on the ecology and management of amphibians and reptiles.

Click a button for our "Why?" series on ...

Why amphibians?

why salamanders?

Why Turtles?