Patricia “Pat” Dumandan (MS, Raptor Biology ’20) is pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology at the University of Florida. She will work on a long-term monitoring project of rodent communities in Portal, Arizona. At UF, Dumandan intends to focus her research on understanding shifts in biodiversity patterns amidst global environmental change using long-term ecological data and modern quantitative tools.
Dumandan, who was born and raised in the Philippines, obtained a bachelor’s degree in Biology with a major in Ecology from the University of the Philippines Mindanao in 2014. She was interested in pursuing a career in conservation science. After completing her undergraduate degree, she took conservation jobs to hone her research skills. She was involved in a variety of local projects ranging from the movement ecology of birds of prey to the monitoring of mobulid fisheries in the Philippines. In 2016, she gained more experience in raptor research as a trainee at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania and at The Flyway Foundation in Thailand before beginning her master’s research at Boise State University.