Diana Dishman serves PDXWildlife as a staff scientist. She has experience working internationally with integrating scientific research into local community education and awareness-raising for marine conservation. This work addressed major threats to endangered dugongs in the Philippines such as habitat degradation and local hunting pressure, and assisted with long term studies of humpback whale populations in Madagascar. While not abroad, Diana is a data analyst who works in environmental consulting and as a contractor for local academic laboratories. Her research interests are currently focused on understanding wildlife population dynamics, particularly with regards to population genetics, landscape connectivity, and population modeling.
Diana graduated from Scripps College in 2006 with a bachelor’s in Organismal Biology, where she did her senior thesis on the effects of feeding enrichment on captive ring-tailed lemurs. After college she worked for a toxicology laboratory conducting effluent testing and studying the effects of metals on aquatic organisms, with a particular focus on the effects of sub-lethal copper concentrations on the behavior of salmonids. She later earned a master’s degree in Biology from Portland State University, where under the supervision of Dr. Debbie Duffield she studied the genetic substructure of the Pacific harbor seal populations along the coasts of Washington and Oregon. Through this work she also volunteered for the Northern Oregon/Southern Washington Marine Mammal Stranding Network and the Willamette Falls Pinniped Fisheries Interaction Project.
She is currently assisting with sustainable seafood research and outreach projects, PDXSeafood, for PDXWildlife that take place right here in the local Portland community.
Publications
- Dishman, DL, DM Thomson, and NJ Karnovsky, (2009). Does simple feeding enrichment raise activity levels of captive ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta)? Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 116(1): 88-95.