For my research, I am interested in utilizing genomics as a toolkit for wildlife conservation, restoration, and monitoring. To do this, I am mainly working with the Denver Mountain Parks bison herds, where I am doing whole-genome sequencing on both current members of both herds as well as historical specimens from the first bison that were brought back to Colorado after the near-extinction of bison in the mid-1800s. Additionally, I am working to understand the impacts of the bottleneck bison went through in a collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute. I am also working with elk from either side of the Greenland Overpass to better understand how I-25 has served as a gene flow barrier, and to begin a long-term study to see how the Greenland Overpass affects wildlife.
Publications: J R Vidrio, O M Takano, L M Hartley, J C Danek, C P Hedberg, S Kuchynka, P T Le, S Levine, M C Murphy, J R Pollard, K Ryan, F F Scheideman, S D Spong, S Maliakal-Witt, A Professional Development Model for Training Biology GTAs in Equitable Teaching: Implementation and Evaluation at Two Minority-Serving Institutions, Integrative Organismal Biology, Volume 8, Issue 1, 2026, obag052, https://doi.org/10.1093/iob/obag052 Scheideman, F. F., Ekernas, L. S., & Swallow, J. G. (2025). Genetic viability of small American bison (Bison bison) populations a century after reintroduction. Frontiers in Conservation Science, 6, 1553543. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2025.1553543