Dr. Stephen Jenkins
Professor of Biology
Behavioral ecology and population ecology particularly of mammals, plant-animal interactions and coevolution

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
1968, A.B., Biology
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
1975, Ph.D., Biology

Current Projects / Teaching
I teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in ecology and organismal biology. I take turns with other faculty teaching Biology 314, Ecology and Population Biology. This is a core course for undergraduate majors in Biology as well as Environmental and Resource Sciences. I also participate in the associated laboratory course, Biology 394. Another of my regular courses is Biology 378, Mammalogy. This is an introduction to systematics, evolution, morphology, physiology, behavior, ecology, and biogeography of mammals. It includes a laboratory which emphasizes learning how to identify mammals of the Great Basin and how to write scientific papers based on lab and field projects. I teach Biology 485/685, Population and Community Ecology, every other year. This course involves detailed discussion of the basic principles of population dynamics, species interactions, and the structure and function of ecological communities. It includes a computer laboratory in which students get to play with a variety of models of population growth and community processes. Another of my regular courses is Biology/EECB 750, Research Design in Ecology. This is a core course for Ph.D. students in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology and is open to M.S. students as well. The main focus of the course is learning how to write effective research proposals. I also work with undergraduates and graduate students on a variety of independent study projects.

Research Interests
Most of the research questions my students and I have asked relate to foraging behavior in one way or another. I have also been involved with studies of the population dynamics of feral horses in Nevada and beavers in Minnesota. As examples of foraging studies, we have used observational and experimental approaches to test models of central-place foraging by beavers, to examine the role of plant secondary compounds in tree selection, and to study effects of predation risk on beaver foraging. We have studied development of food preferences by Belding's ground squirrels and nutritional reasons for differential seed preferences of desert rodents. One of the advantages of this focus on foraging is that I have broad interests in evolution, behavior, and ecology, and foraging relates to larger issues in each of these fields.

One aspect of foraging that I find especially interesting is food-hoarding behavior. We use laboratory experiments with kangaroo rats and pocket mice to test hypotheses about the adaptive value of various spatial patterns of food storage; for example, larderhoarding all seeds in a burrow or scatterhoarding seeds throughout an individual's home range. We have discovered large amounts of variation among individuals within the same species in patterns of food hoarding; this is a focal point of current research. Food hoarding also has important implications for impacts of rodents on plant populations and communities, and I am working with Bill Longland and Steve Vander Wall, colleagues in the EECB Program, on field experiments to examine these implications for desert plants.

My graduate students do both laboratory and field studies. Laboratory experiments have been designed to examine various aspects of foraging behavior. Field work has been conducted in the mountains and deserts of Nevada and California and forests of northern Minnesota. I work closely with students to develop hypotheses that are both interesting and testable and to design studies that will be effective and rigorous, but I also expect to see students develop a good deal of independence as their projects progress.

Selected Publications
1997 Breck, S. W., and S. H. Jenkins. Use of an ecotone to test the effects of soil and desert rodents on the distribution of Indian ricegrass. Ecography 20:253-263.

1997 Jenkins, S. H. Perspectives on individual variation in mammals. Journal of Mammalogy 78:271-273.

1997 Hayes, J. P., and S. H. Jenkins. Individual variation in mammals. Journal of Mammalogy 78:274-293.

1997 Smith, D. W., and S. H. Jenkins. Seasonal change in body mass and size of tail in northern beavers. Journal of Mammalogy 78:869-876.

1997 McMurray, M. H., S. H. Jenkins, and W. S. Longland. Effects of seed density on germination and establishment of a native and an introduced grass species dispersed by granivorous rodents. American Midland Naturalist 138:322-330.

1997 Sweitzer, R. A., S. H. Jenkins, and J. Berger. The near-extinction of porcupines by mountain lions and consequences of ecosystem change in the Great Basin desert. Conservation Biology 11:1407-1417.

1998 Jenkins, S. H., and S. W. Breck. Differences in food hoarding among six species of heteromyid rodents. Journal of Mammalogy 79:1221-1233.

1998 Duncan, R. D., and S. H. Jenkins. Use of visual cues in foraging by a diurnal herbivore, the Belding's ground squirrel. Canadian Journal of Zoology 76:1766-1770.

1999 Jenkins, S. H., and D. W. Smith. American beaver / Castor canadensis. Pp 548-552 in D. E. Wilson and S. Ruff, eds., The Smithsonian book of North American mammals. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D. C., 750 pp.

2000 Veech, J. A., D. A. Charlet, and S. H. Jenkins. Interspecific variation in seed mass and the coexistence of conifer species: a null model test. Evolutionary Ecology Research 2:353-363.

2000 Newmark, J. A., and S. H. Jenkins. Sex differences in agonistic behavior of Merriam's kangaroo rats (Dipodomys merriami). American Midland Naturalist 143:377-388.

2000 Jenkins, S. H. Density dependence in population dynamics of feral horses. Resource Notes No. 26. Bureau of Land Management, U. S. Department of the Interior, 2 pages.

2001 Longland, W. S., S. H. Jenkins, S. B. Vander Wall, J. A. Veech, and S. Pyare. Seedling recruitment in Oryzopsis hymenoides: Are desert granivores mutualists or predators? Ecology 82:3131-3148.

2002 Jenkins, S. H. Data pooling and type I errors: a comment on Leger & Didrichsons (1994). Animal Behaviour 63:F9-F11.

2002 Jenkins, S. H., and M. C. Ashley. Feral horses and burros, Equus caballus and Equus asinus. In Wild mammals of North America, 2nd edition, edited by G. Feldhamer et al., Johns Hopkins University Press, in press

Additional Links
Biological Resources Research Center
Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology Program

University of Nevada Reno
Biology Department m/s 314
Reno, NV 89557

e-mail Dr. Stephen Jenkins
(spam proof) jenkins-at-unr-dot-edu

Office phone
775-784-6188
FAX number
775-784-1302

Additional Links