Ashley Peele

Dr. Ashley Peele is an avian ecologist who has spent 12 years studying wildlife conservation and management in the US and Caribbean.  She became Coordinator of the 2nd Virginia Breeding Bird Atlas in late 2015 after completing her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Tulane University.  Her graduate work focused on understanding how bird behavior, habitat quality, and climate interacted to regulate population size in the non-breeding season.  She spent five-years running a large-scale population study of migratory warblers across a range of Jamaican habitats as part of her graduate work with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.  She has managed bird monitoring projects for NGOs and worked on sponsored projects for the Florida Wildlife and Conservation Commission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and US Geological Survey.  Her research background and interests include avian microbiology, migration ecology, population biology, and the application of citizen science tools for bird conservation.  She has expertise in bird banding and censusing, ecological monitoring, and advanced statistical population modeling.  In her spare time, she can typically be found hiking, paddling, or birding in the mountains of western Virginia.