Behavior and Population Dynamics of Top Predators
Institute Seminar by John F. Benson
- Date: Jan 20, 2026
- Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: John F. Benson
- I have conducted field research on wildlife populations across much of North America studying wolves, mountain lions, black bears, coyotes, moose, mule deer, bighorn sheep, elk, white sharks, and other species. I am motivated by a desire to inform the conservation of wildlife and wild places – and by a fascination with the natural world. My work combines population, behavioral, molecular, and landscape ecology as I attempt to understand factors influencing individuals, populations, ecological communities, and ecosystems. In my lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, my students, postdocs, and I conduct intensive field studies around the world, asking questions grounded in ecological theory and using quantitative approaches to achieve practical outcomes and contribute to basic ecological understanding.
- Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
- Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
- Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
- Contact: lrosales@ab.mpg.de
Top predators play important roles in ecological communities and yet their populations are declining globally in response to a variety of human-caused stressors. Large carnivores persist in some contemporary landscapes dominated by humans, presenting challenges and opportunities for conservation and ecological understanding. My colleagues and I have been studying spatial ecology, population dynamics, and predator-prey interactions of mountain lions and wolves in North America to advance basic ecology and inform conservation efforts for over 20 years. In California, USA, we have studied mountain lions across the statewide metapopulation in a large collaborative effort that has allowed us to investigate aspects of population ecology typically only studied within single populations. In Ontario, Canada, we are studying federally threatened eastern wolves persisting in a small, fragmented population within a unique three-species hybrid zone with gray wolves and coyotes. In both systems, we have combined GPS telemetry, genetic analysis, and quantitative modeling to evaluate factors limiting large carnivores in landscapes shared with humans. Our work has resulted in changes to management policy and on-the-ground conservation action, and has also contributed new insight into the behavior and dynamics of small populations threatened by human-caused mortality, fractured landscape connectivity, and interactions between genetic and demographic processes.
The MPI-AB Seminar Series is open to members of MPI and Uni Konstanz. The zoom link is published each week in the MPI-AB newsletter.