Who we are

Group members

PI: Uri Roll

I'm an associate professor at the Mitrani Department for Desert Ecology, in Sde-Boker. I am deeply passionate about nature and I feel that we have a moral obligation to conserve it - to minimize our footprint and correct mistakes we've made in the past. I feel that science has a lot to contribute towards this end, but that we also have to leave our ivory towers and strive that our knowledge and insights will make a difference in the real world.

You can find my publications here.
Feel free to contact me at: uriroll@bgu.ac.il

ATLAS technician

Tamir Rozenberg

I am working as a lab technician in charge of starting the ATLAS project, in collaboration with Prof. Oded berger-Tal from the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology. The ATLAS system is an advanced wildlife tracking system, that provide the ability to track and locate large number of individuals (even species smaller than 30g) at an extremely high spatial and temporal resolution. You can find more on the ATLAS ground-breaking abilities here: https://www.tau.ac.il/~stoledo/tags/.
For me, the use of technological solutions to improve research quality and to expand the research questions we can ask is fascinating. Working in the ATLAS project and in the Mitrani Department for Desert Ecology is an opportunity to combine between my curiosity about animal ecology and behavior and my love for the desert environment.

Post-Docs

Victor China

I started my research career chasing rodents in the Negev desert at Prof. Zvika Abramsky's lab. After getting familiar with the desert I choose to move to the Red Sea where I studied the interaction between the cleaner fish and its reef fish clients under the supervision of Dr. Moshe Kiflawi and Prof. Burt Kotler. After I finished my M.Sc. I remained in Eilat and turned to teaching for a few years during which I met my wife. Finally, I started a Ph.D. in the field of bio-physics under the supervision of Prof. Roi Holzman, where I studied larval feeding behavior and how the physical environment affects them.
I am now a post-doc fellow working in collaboration with Prof. Yoni Belmaker. In my study, I wish to implement machine learning to the ecological study of reef fish species.

email: victor.china@gmail.com

Enav Vidan

I am an ecologist and conservation biologist, deeply passionate about our natural world and its protection. I conducted an M.Sc. in Ecology under Prof. Tamar Dayan and Prof. Noga Kronfeld, on the temporal separation dynamics of spiny mice in Ein-Gedi. My Ph.D. focused on global lizard macroecology and was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Shai Meiri, and Prof. Yoni Belmaker. Beyond that I worked for many years as an independent consultant for many conservation and ecology projects, as well as for different organizations such as the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (as the Southern Israel district ecologist, amongst other roles), the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, and others.
My project focuses on prioritizing for conservation the Israeli land-vertebrate fauna, in light of current and future development schemes, and climates.

Email: enavidan@gmail.com

Reut Vardi

My main interests are urban ecology, animal behaviour and physiology, and conservation culturomics.
Currently I am working on physiological adaptations of lizards to different habitats (with Shai Meiri and Eran Levin), and assessing land-use changes effects on reptile distribution (with Shai Meiri and Uri Roll).

E-mail: reutvardi@gmail.com
Twitter: @ReutVardi

Amir Lewin

I am a landscape ecologist interested in the interactions between human-social and environmental systems. My PhD research focused on social-ecological cascading effects in desert agricultural landscapes. I integrate economic, institutional, and policy drivers underlying agricultural regimes, landscape practices and water-usage modifying desert ecosystems. In collaboration with Uri Roll and Shimon Rachmilevitch, I will be expanding on this work to quantify the expansion of agriculture across drylands globally, and to investigate the socio-economic determinants underlying these land-use changes and their subsequent effects on unique and fragile desert ecosystems.

Krista N. Oswald

I am an ecologist who mainly studies how birds are being affected by our changing planet, mainly increasing land-use change and increasing temperature. My MSc and PhD focused on the Cape Rockjumper endemic to South Africa, as part of the Hot Birds Research Project (with Ben Smit, Susie Cunningham, Alan Lee, and Shelley Edwards). With Uri Roll and Oded Berger-Tal, I will be expanding on my previous expertise and taking advantage of the new ATLAS network being built around the Negev, using Arabian Babblers as a focal species. While I will be studying basic breeding ecology and behaviour in response to temperature, the ATLAS network will allow me to link these effects to habitat-use in the presence or absence of the human-modified habitat and its accompanying invader species.

Personal website: https://www.kristaoswald.com/
Twitter: @krista_natasha
Instagram: @nature_with_krista

Nicolas Dubos

I am a macroecologist intetested in the mechanisms that shape large-scale patterns of biodiversity and their response to anthropogenic activity. I give special attention to conservation application in my work, although I am interested in theoretical aspects. I am here as a post-doc supervised by Uri and Shai Meiri, and am predicting tetrapod response to global changes, with a focus on reptiles.

Ellie Diamant

I am a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist interested in the interaction between human-caused environmental change and wildlife response, particularly birds in the built environment. For my post-doc, I am working in collaboration with Uri and Prof. Oded Berger-Tal on how the built environment is affecting species interactions and behavior, particularly between the Tristram’s starlings, hooded crows, and invasive common mynas. I will be using the ATLAS network to obtain fine-scale movement data across the Negev landscape.

Previously, I worked on the evolution of female hummingbird color variation for my MSc, under Prof. Dustin Rubenstein. For my PhD, I researched how populations respond to multiple stressor interactions, with an emphasis on the pattern and process of behavioral and morphological adaptation in an urbanizing songbird, the dark-eyed junco, across Southern Californian cities. This work was conducted under the advisement of Prof. Pamela Yeh.
In addition, I am passionate about transdisciplinary approaches to socio-ecology and fostering connections between the human and the more-than-human; I have worked with Prof. Rebeca Méndez and the Counterforce Lab to connect ecological thinking with artistic responses to environmental injustice and ecological crises in Southern California.

Email: elliediamant@gmail.com
Personal website: https://elliediamant.wordpress.com
Instagram: @vegandoesscience

Ph.D. students

Tal Raz

I have always had a connection and compassion towards nature and animals, and a great will to contribute to their conservation.
I conducted an M.Sc. in Ecology under the supervision of Dr. Takuya Iwamura and Prof. Keith Hobson, on Afro-Palearctic migratory passerines and identifying their non-breeding grounds in Africa.

During my PhD I will focus on global conservation of reptiles, co-supervised by Prof. Shai Meiri (Tel Aviv University).

Anna Zimin

A bird watcher, ringer (bander) & surveyor.
Although my experience is mostly ornithological, I am very much interested in exploring all vertebrates, as well as other taxa.
Before starting my M.Sc. in ecology, I've participated in several ornithological field research projects, starting near home and gradually expanding my ventures into the more remote corners of the Palearctic. With growing experience in fieldwork and the duration of each stay (reaching the span of entire migratory seasons), a new perspective on the temporal and spatial ecological dynamics started to reveal itself to me, inspiring to seek a deeper understanding through the tools of meticulous scientific research. Gaining these tools and using them for a better understanding of our ever-changing natural world is thus the main motivation behind my academic endeavors.
My M.Sc. with Prof. Shai Meiri (Tel-Aviv University) and Uri dealt with the forces shaping viviparity in squamates.
My current work focuses on the factors that shape extinction risk in reptiles, under the supervision of Shai & Uri.

email: annazimin[at]mail.tau.ac.il

Franklin Sargunaraj

My Ph.D work will be dedicated to the conservation of critically endangered Hula painted frogs (Latonia nigriventer).
The Hula painted frog was once considered to be extinct, probably due to Hula lake draining. It was rediscovered in 2011 at the Hula reserve, nonetheless their numbers are extremely low. At present, Hula frogs mostly inhabit trenches around Hula valley, which are quite prone to anthropogenic hazards such as oil spill, or pollution. Any threat to this habitat could imperil the survival of Hula painted frogs.
In my Ph.D., I intend to characterize this aquatic habitat's physical and chemical properties (such as temperature, oxygen content) to check what influences Hula frogs' survival. Furthermore, I will aim to predict the favorable dwelling habitats of this rare species, using non-invasive methods such as extraction of environmental DNA from water. This work will be vital to protect the only living member of genus Latonia, by recommending characteristics of safer spots for reintroduction, or to construct new dedicated habitats for this species. My methodologies, and findings could be translated to conserve other endangered aquatic fauna on a global scale.
This work on will be carried out under the guidance of Uri, Prof. Eli Geffen, and Prof. Sarig Gafny.

email: franklin.hulafrog[at]gmail.com

M.Sc. students

Timart Laniado

Biologist and chemical engineer, passionate about nature conservation and statistics.

I have worked as an air quality engineer in the Haifa bay Municipality.
Love bird watching and traveling around the world to remote locations.
In October 2020 I started my M.Sc. on global conservation of reptiles under the supervision of Prof. Shai Meiri (Tel-Aviv University) & Uri.

Layla Gordon

I am a masters student with Prof. Uri Roll and Prof. Yoni Belmaker (Tel Aviv University), studying the effects of human coastal pressure on parrotfish and grouper species in the Red Sea. Originally from the U.S., I have a bachelor’s degree in animal behavior from Bucknell University.
I love science for its power to uncover the hidden relationships and stories within this beautifully complex natural world. I aim to understand the effects of human behavior on ecology and evolution, particularly within understudied taxa and ecosystems, and to spread the untold stories to the world beyond academia.

Chen Donghe

I'm passionate about nature and animals, especially reptiles. I'm also interested in computer and statistics.
Before my M.Sc. in Ecology, I majored in computational biology. Because of my interest in Ecology, I've also taken a lot of courses of Zoology and Ecology, and conducted many Ecology researches including many field works during undergraduate years.
I'm now focusing on macroecology of snake traits - species distribution models, under the supervision of Prof. Shai Meiri (Tel-Aviv University) and Uri.

email: chendonghe123@126.com; chendonghe321@gmail.com

Jonathan Ben Simon

I have dreamt about becoming a zoologist since the age of four even though I grew up as an urban child in the center of Tel-Aviv. During high school I enrolled in The Odyssey Program of the Future Scientists Center and completed my B.Sc. in Biology with Emphasis on Ecology and Evolution, at Tel-Aviv University. While doing my undergrad studies I assisted many ecologists in field and lab work and gained some experience (and had a lot of fun). I love traveling, wildlife watching and nature photography. I work for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and for the Israeli Naval Medical Institute. My intentions for the future are to use science for nature conservation and to protect endangered species and environments.My M.Sc. study is focusing on comparing biological traits of extinction and threat across three time scales: subfossils (late Pleistocene to Holocene), historical extinctions and present extinction risks- under the supervision of Prof. Shai Meiri (Tel-Aviv University) and Uri.
E-mail: jonathan240@gmaill.com

Anuj Shinde

I am broadly interested in the evolutionary biology and biogeography of squamate reptiles and frogs. With HerpClub (a SciComm initiative), I try to popularize Indian herpetological science amongst the general public and encourage natural history observations. Hiking in the table-topped mountains of northern western ghats, I have had the opportunity to explore many rainforest, shrubland, and grassland biomes which has further sparked my interest in understanding species distributions and endemism.
In my MSc research, my focus will be on the macroecology of snake activity patterns, wherein under the supervision of Prof Shai Meiri and Uri I will be investigating questions in reptile evolution, macroecology, biogeography and see how snake activity times differ from their lizard kin.

Email - anujherp@gmail.com
Twitter - @anujherp

Klil Shahar

I have been fascinated by wildlife since a young age, and I love birds in particular. Before deciding what I wanted to study, I volunteered in the Batumi raptor count in Georgia and in bird research stations here in Israel, and became aware of many challenges related to conservation. I completed a B.Sc. in Biology at BGU and recently joined the lab as a master's student (co-supervised by Oded Berger-Tal), planning to use the ATLAS system to track the invasive Common Myna and understand its patterns of habitat use.

Email - klilsh@post.bgu.ac.il

Past members

Post-Docs

Gopal Murali

I am an engineer turned evolutionary ecologist fascinated by reptiles and have a broad interest in many areas of ecology and evolutionary biology. For my PhD dissertation, I investigated how animals use colour patterns against predation, especially when in motion using a range of tools, including approaches from experimental psychology, digital image processing, and comparative phylogenetic methods. Additionally, I have independently conducted field experiments to understand the determinants of contest outcome and multimodal signaling in dancing frogs from the southern Western Ghats. During my graduate studies, I have also developed a keen interest in macroecology, in specific, mechanisms governing species diversity.

Currently, I am a Fulbright-Kalam postdoctoral fellow at the Wiens Lab, University of Arizona, United States.
You can find more details about me and my work in my website.

Gabriel Henrique de Oliveira Caetano

I am working with Uri and Prof. Shai Meiri on identifying predictors and estimating conservation status for data deficient tetrapods.
I have worked with the effect of climate deviations on the population dynamics of Brazilian lizards with Professor Guarino Colli and on the development of methodologies to estimate ecophysiological predictors of lizard's distribution with Professor Barry Sinervo.
My main interests are biogeography, ecophysiology, biostatistics, and bioinformatics.

M.Sc. students

Anna Cihlová

I am originally from Prague, where I finished my Bachelor's Degree in Applied Ecology while simultaneously working for Startup Studio as a Frontend Developer (coder). Computer Science, like Applied Environmental Science, are both fields that take an initial concept or idea and turn it into something practical and creative with a real impact. I have a love for both of these fields and combined with my passion for nature, I would like to work with online data on natural habitats to investigate them and communicate the role that they play in our lives and ultimately help to conserve them. This is the mission of the newly forming scientific field of "iEcology".
In my M.Sc. project - jointly supervised by Uri and Prof. Ivan Jaric - I explored Apps for nature - smart phone application dedicated to engaging people with nature.

Eli Finarov

An outdoor person with deep passion for nature protection. I've spent almost half of the past decade in East Asia, and worked as a tour and trekking guide in China and Taiwan.
My M.Sc in Ecology under the supervision of Uri, Prof. Shai Meiri (Tel Aviv University), and Prof. Assaf Shwartz (Technion), focused on response strategies for the Common Myna.

Email: elifi84@gmail.com

Goni Barki

I have always been fascinated by nature, whether as a city kid binging on National Geographic or as I grew older outdoors, mostly hiking the dessert. At a certain point, I realized that I want my life to revolve around this passion and started a B.Sc. in biology at the Ben Gurion University, during which I was drawn to ecology, especially to the field of spatial ecology. Out of growing care and awareness of the state of the natural world, I decided my next step will be studying and working in the field of conservation biology. Goni finished his M.Sc in the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology in Sde-Boker, under the supervision of Uri and Prof. Shai Meiri.

email: gonib@post.bgu.ac.il

Gali Ofer

During the past decade I gained expertise in GIS and image analysis and conducted several projects in these fields. I had my heart set on conducting a B.Sc. in biology and was certain that I'll be back to work right after that. However, along my studies I discovered the fields of Biogeograpy and Macroecology which best combined my two passions of biology and spatial analysis. My M.Sc. project was explored spatial patterns in the global distributions of land vertebrates, and I'm pretty sure I found my calling.
My main supervisor was Prof. Shai Meiri and from the the School of Zoology, Tel-Aviv University.

email: galiofer@mail.tau.ac.il

Lior Shak

My primary research interests surround factors that shape the risk of reptilian extinction. I am focusing on snakes’ intrinsic life-history traits that might put species in greater threat. I am also interested in expanding the criteria that determine species' IUCN Red List threat status. I plan to check whether certain biological attributes may cause threat status shifts, and the implication these have for conservation management.
In October 2019 I began an MSc under the supervision of Prof. Shai Meiri (Tel Aviv University) and Uri, focusing on detecting important predictors of species’ extinction risk.
Prior to my master's degree, my interest in conservation biology led me to earn a Postgraduate Diploma of conservation biology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
I also hold a bachelor's degree from the Department of Animal Sciences at the Hebrew University.
liorshak@mail.tau.ac.il

Ph.D. students

Ana de Osma Vargas-Machuca

I am a Nature lover!
I wanted to be a biologist ever since I was a child and became fascinated with raptors in general and vultures in particular.
I have worked and volunteered in many conservation projects around the world. One of these was monitoring the migration of birds through the Strait of Gibraltar. The migration phenomenon captivated me. Consequently I visited Batumi (Georgia) to marvel at migration there. I also traveled to Pennsylvania (USA) where, at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, I trained in Raptor Conservation Science. Following this, I realized how important it is for me to be part of the raptor conservation science family.
Raptor migration also brought me to Israel, to partake in the spring migration counts in Eilat. I fell in love with this country and decided to stay here further.
Ana worked on "The role of vultures as keystone and flagships in human landscapes".

Favorite quote: "The time to protect a species is while it is still common". Rosalie Edge