Alicia Brunner

Alicia Brunner is a tracking biologist managing Audubon’s Migratory Bird Tracking Program within the Migratory Bird Initiative. She supports and coordinates the deployment of bird tracking technologies across the Audubon network and synthesizes various types of movement data to reveal seasonal movements, behaviors, and migration patterns across the Western Hemisphere. Working with local Audubon researchers, Audubon Americas and various other scientific partners, Alicia advances how we use tracking data to reveal and inform strategic conservation priorities.

Specializing in avian movement ecology, Alicia has over a decade of experience studying the migration and behavioral ecology of Neotropical migratory songbirds across their full annual cycle. Her research explores how migratory birds behaviorally respond to environmental change, specifically how shifting climates and ecosystems impact their timing of migration, physiology and habitat use. She has deployed hundreds of tracking devices on many different species and established Motus Wildlife Tracking towers in various sites across the Northeast and the Caribbean to monitor avian movement across seasons.

Alicia holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay and earned her M.Sc. from The Ohio State University. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Cornell University in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution to investigate how lengthening green periods impact the fall migration of migratory warblers in Northern temperate forests. Alicia is passionate about science collaboration and sees a unique opportunity in our ability to track migratory birds to not only make connections between ecosystems, but also connections between people and cultures around the world.