Tal Avgar

S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources: Wildland Resources

Tal is a quantitative behavioral ecologist with expertise in animal movement and habitat selection, wildlife population biology, consumer-resource interactions, and ecological modelling. Tal has been an assistant professor at the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University since 2018, where he teaches an undergraduate Breadth Life Sciences course (Ecology of our Changing World), and two graduate courses (Space-Use Ecology and Graduate Ecology). He is a prolific researcher who has so far published 48 peer-reviewed papers with nearly 3000 citations.

Tal had received both his B.Sc (in Biology and Geology; 2004) and his M.Sc (in Environmental Sciences; 2007) from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), where he worked under supervision of Ran Nathan. He received his PhD (in Integrative Biology; 2013) from the University of Guelph (Canada), where he worked under supervision of John Fryxell. As a postdoctoral fellow (2014-2017) at the University of Alberta (Canada), Tal worked with Mark Boyce and Mark Lewis. Since joining USU in 2018, Tal has advised or co-advised 10 graduate students (3 PhD and 7 MSc), served on the advisory committees of 18 graduate students, and supervised three undergraduate theses (for which he was awarded the QCNR Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year 2021).