Ashley Hodge
Texas A&M University - Kingsville
Graduate Research Assistant, Master of Science in Range and Wildlife Management
I originally hail from Northern New York, where I obtained my bachelor’s degree from Paul Smith’s College in biology. I spent my senior year at Paul Smith’s conducting a pilot study using dogs as sentinels for Lyme disease in the Adirondacks. After graduating, I spent time in the pharmaceutical industry, but quickly left to get back to wildlife. In 2019, I moved to Florida as a necropsy technician for white-tailed deer, and in 2020 accepted a graduate position at Texas A&M University – Kingsville.
My current project is focusing on the spatial ecology of white-tailed deer and how their movements influence cattle fever tick abundance on the landscape. We are currently analyzing long distance movements, border crossings, and home ranges with landscape metrics to determine what may be driving movement and high tick numbers. Finally, we are interested in how fine-scale genetic structure influences deer movement, this will allow us to breakdown social structures and understand population dynamics.