Education

Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA
2022 Bachelor of Arts, Major: Biology

University of California, Los Angeles
PhD Student, Tingley Lab
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Experience

Bear Divide Migration Count — 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
Counting migratory birds at dawn by the masses: observations, point counts, data entry, interacting with the public, teaching volunteers in-flight identification skills. Lead counter 2022 season; Lead counter and Organizer for 2023 & 2024 seasons.

Newhall Pass Wildlife Bridge & Connectivity Project — June 2023-August 2023
Literature review of 19 species (dispersal, connectivity, habitat, movement, corridor use, slope, aspect, climate response); creating raster data layers for models using Omniscape; infrastructure tagging; assigning cost values; use of camera trap, collar, and community science data; site visits; use of R, Slurm, Bash, Julia, and Omniscape

Torrey Pines Environmental Consulting — 2022-Current
Nesting bird, woodpecker, rare plant, Least Bell’s Vireo, Coastal California Gnatcatcher, Kangaroo rat, and Western Joshua Tree surveys and construction monitoring throughout Southern California.

Moore Laboratory of Zoology — 2017-Current
Prepping bird specimens for museum collections (dissection, preservation, tissue collections, anatomy, sewing); reorganizing the entire museum collection after new building renovation; research projects including geographic variation of Black-chinned Sparrows, divergence and speciation mechanisms in Red Warblers, collaborative work with researchers in Mexico on Golden-browed Warblers, color spectrometry work on Azure-hooded Jays; working on the Mexican Bird Resurvey Project, and Bear Divide Migration Count; mentoring and training younger students in handling museum specimens, taking morphological measurements, prepping specimens, and general guidance in research, writing, and using R.

Bear Divide Banding Station — 2023, 2022, 2021
Bird banding, including clearing net lanes, setting up and breaking down mist nets, extracting birds from nets, handling and processing live birds, data collection and entry, feather collection, interacting with the public.

Pasadena Audubon Society — 2020-2022
Board Member — Publicity Chair: running all social media accounts, creating content, engaging with members and non-members; part of Education Committee, Advocacy Committee, and assisted with Young Birders Club programming, Binoculars to Youth Program; assisting with video work, editing, designing flyers for events.

Los Angeles Audubon — 2019
Least Tern nest monitoring.

Natural History Museum of LA County — 2017-2019
Museum Guide: interacting with guests of all ages, training and certification for exhibit halls. Entomology Department: assisting with research on Dolichopodid flies; identifying, handling, sorting, and sexing insects collected from all over LA County for BioSCAN project. Echinoderms Department: checking and handling specimens, refilling and changing out old ethanol for the entire collection, engaging with public about BioSCAN project in the Nature Lab Exhibit. Live Animals Program: cleaning, feeding, and general care for museum animals.

Audubon Starr Ranch — 2018
Bird banding, including opening and closing mist nets, extracting birds from nets, safely handling live birds, collecting measurements and other data, releasing birds.

Audubon Center Debs Park — 2017, 2018, 2019
Led native plant walks to local community members in northeast LA; bird banding; trained volunteers in point counts and collected point count data along the LA River for Western Rivers Bird Counts.

Ventura Fish and Wildlife — 2017
California Condor nest and egg monitoring in the Sespe Wilderness: training, hiking out and back to remote nest site, setting up scopes for observations, data entry.

California Wildlife Center — 2016-2017
Volunteer in Intensive Care Unit supporting technicians in rehabilitation of local wildlife species including birds, squirrels, rabbits, gophers, opossums, deer. Duties included physical exams, pulling and administering medications, handling wild animals, tube feeding/medicating, prepping diets and feeding, general upkeep and cleaning of facilities, and transport of wildlife from LA County animal shelters to the center.

Presentations

2023 Western Bird Banding Association Conference
Presentation (15 mins), Bear Divide: A Background and Methods in Counting Migratory Birds at Dawn

2023 San Fernando Valley Audubon Society
Invited Talk, Three Tales of Diversification in Mexican Birds

2022 American Ornithological Society + Birds Caribbean Conference
Poster Presentation, Testing for inter-mountain connectivity in the Mexican Highlands with Red Warblers

2022 Biology Senior Comprehensive, Occidental College
Presentation (45 mins), Bright Lights, Big City: How the September 11th Tribute in Light is affecting nocturnally migrating birds

Awards / Honors

2023 — National Science Foundation — Graduate Research Fellowship Program Award Recipient

2023 — Radar Aeroecology Workshop Travel Award — Colorado State University, AeroEco Lab

2023 — Lida Scott Brown Fellowship — University of California, Los Angeles
2023 — Alumni Fellowship — University of California, Los Angeles
2023 — Graduate Dean’s Scholar Award — University of California, Los Angeles

2022 — Maria Pereyra Award for Research in Biology — Occidental College
2022 — Richter Research Abroad Scholar — Occidental College (in Galápagos Islands)
2022 — ASP Travel Conference Grant — Occidental College (in Puerto Rico)

2017 — Selected Artist-in-Residence — Iowa Lakeside Laboratory

Honors Scholarship — Occidental College — (2021-2022)
Dean’s List — Occidental College — (Spring 2021, Spring 2022)

Workshops / Certifications

Radar Aeroecology Workshop — Colorado State University — (Summer 2023)
Certified California Naturalist — University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources — (Since 2017)

Publications

Published:

2024
Convergent niche shifts of endangered parrots (genus Amazon) during successful establishment in urban southern California. Brenda R. Ramirez, Rowdy J. Freehand, Allison Muhlheim, Amanda J. Zellmer, Devon A. DeRaad, Eliza J. Kirsch, Marquette J. Mutchler, Maeve B. Secor, Kelsey R. Reckling, Margaret E. Schedl, Brooke Durham, Whitney L.E. Tsai, Ryan S. Terrill, Siddharth Sannapareddy, Ashwin Sivakumar, Kimball L. Garrett, John E. McCormack. Diversity and Distributions. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ddi.13817

2023
An elevational shift facilitated the Mesoamerican diversification of Azure-hooded Jays (Cyanolyca cucullata) during the Great American Biotic Interchange. John E. McCormack, Molly M. Hill, Devon A. DeRaad, Eliza J. Kirsch, Kelsey R. Reckling, Marquette J. Mutchler, Brenda R. Ramirez, Russell M.L. Campbell, Jessie F. Salter, Alana K. Pizarro, Whitney L.E. Tsai, Elisa Bonaccorso. Ecology & Evolution 13(8): e10411. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10411


In review:

Darwin’s Overlooked Radiation: genomic evidence points to the early stages of a radiation in the Galápagos prickly pear cactus (Opuntia, Cactaceae). Felipe Zapata, Jose Cerca, Dana McCarney, Claudia L. Henriquez, Bashir B. Tiamiyu, John E. McCormack, Kelsey R. Reckling, Jaime A Chaves, Gonzalo Rivas-Torres. In review. Proceedings B. Preprint

In preparation:

90 year resurvey reveals rapid loss of avian diversity throughout Mexico. Ryan S. Terrill, Morgan W. Tingley, Adolfo G. Navarro, A. Townsend Peterson, Vicente Rodríguez, Humberto Antonio Berlanga García, Whitney L.E. Tsai Nakashima, Kelsey R. Reckling, John E. McCormack.

Divergence with gene flow in Red Warblers (Cardellina rubra) across the Mexican Highlands. Kelsey R. Reckling, Whitney L.E. Tsai, Ryan S. Terrill, Emma M. White, Adolfo G. Navarro, John E. McCormack.

Variation in morphometric and vocal traits of the Basileuterus belli complex (Aves: Parulidae) in the Mesoamerican highlands. Reyes-Pino, V., Almazán-Núñez, R.C., Rojas-Soto, O., Sosa-López, R., Reckling, K.R., McCormack, J. In prep. Ornithology.

Non Peer-Reviewed Publications

Kelsey R. Reckling, 2022. Personal Essay — Western Tanager, Volume 89 No. 1. Los Angeles Audubon.

Languages

Spanish — Intermediate
French — Beginner