A full plate for scientist at USGS station

Seven years ago, scientist Tabitha Graves was crunching data for Kate Kendall’s groundbreaking DNA study of grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

Today, Graves is embarking on a host of her own research projects out of the same office Kendall ran for decades in Glacier National Park.

“It’s real exciting to try and fill Kate’s shoes,” Graves said recently. “It’s a real privilege.”

Graves was named the research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Glacier in February, replacing Kendall who retired in 2013. She’s hit the ground running, with projects on tap for this summer and others in the pipeline pending funding.

Graves has an impressive resume of her own. She grew up exploring the woods in a small town in southeast Minnesota and got a bachelor’s in German literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Her career path took a right turn in the graduate world, however, and she obtained her master’s in wildlife biology from the University of Montana — her thesis looked at motorized vehicle impacts on grizzly bears in the Badger-Two Medicine region just south of Glacier from 1999-2002.

Graves worked on the study with Chris Servheen, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator. She then received her doctorate in forest science from Northern Arizona University in 2012. After that, she worked with Paul Beier on wildlife corridors and predator connectivity research across landscapes.

Graves has also done research on bighorn sheep in Alberta with biologist Jack Hogg, who was researching male dominance among sheep. A mountain lion that kept eating the sheep made the study more interesting, she noted.

“Every few days, a sheep — usually a young one — would end up dead or missing,” she said.

Her work this season will continue the relationship with researchers in Canada. Her office is teaming up with biologists in Alberta looking for ways to count grizzly bears more economically using DNA analysis.

Graves is also working on a study that involves climate change, grizzly bears and huckleberries. Researchers will employ inexpensive remote time-lapse cameras to record the growth phases of huckleberry plants across Glacier Park. The data can be used to pinpoint when certain plants flower, for example, and whether the timing of such events makes them vulnerable to climate change.

The study will also look at insect relationships with huckleberries. There’s about 400 different species of bees in Montana, but no one really knows which species pollinate huckleberries.

Climate change has also caused some plants to flower sooner, which has resulted in some plant blooms and insect pollinators getting out of sync. Models also suggest that a warmer climate will mean more wildfires, and huckleberries take several years to regenerate after fires.

The overarching concern with huckleberries is bears — huckleberries and other berries are a main food source for bears in Glacier Park. The diet of bears in the region is 80 to 90 percent vegetation, and the concern is that bears might not be able to adapt or find other food sources if huckleberries are adversely impacted by climate change. It could also change the distribution and density of bears and other animals across the landscape.

Another concern is invasive insects. The spotted wing drosophilia, a fruit fly from eastern Asia, feeds on tree fruit and is impacting fruit crops in the U.S., including fruit near Flathead Lake. The fruit fly is known to infect blueberries, and there’s concern it could also impact the huckleberry crop.

If that wasn’t a full plate, Graves is also slowly working on a “family tree” that traces the lineage of four generations of about 200 grizzly bears in the NCDE whose DNA were collected during Kendall’s studies over the past decade.

Graves would also like to take a further look at the bighorn sheep population in Glacier Park, continuing research conducted by USGS scientist Kim Keating.

It seems like an impressive workload, but the affable Graves just smiles.

“It’s pretty exciting,” she said.