Katie N. Bertrand
Assistant Professor
Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
South Dakota State University
Northern Plains Biostress Laboratory
SNP 138, Box 2140B
Brookings, SD 57007-1696
Voice: (605) 688-6121/Fax: (605) 688-4515
e-mail: katie.bertrand@sdstate.edu
Dr. Bertrand is an Assistant Professor who joined the Department in 2008. Her primary teaching responsibilities include Integrated Natural Resource Management (ABS 475), Ichthyology (WL 367), Introduction to Wildlife and Fisheries (WL 220), and Environmental Conservation (WL 110). Dr. Bertrand will advise and mentor both undergraduate and graduate students. She has a 60% teaching and 40% research appointment.
As a stream ecologist, Dr. Bertrand is interested in the role of consumers in ecosystems and how their roles vary along spatially-explicit environmental gradients. Her research focuses on fishes to answer the over-arching questions: how do consumers affect ecosystem structure and function, how can invasion and conservation biology inform management decisions, does functional redundancy exist, and ultimately, how might global change mediate consumer effects? Using a combination of broad-scale pattern analysis and experimental manipulations in natural streams and experimental stream systems, she explores the mechanisms that drive ecosystem processes, quantifies the relevance of those mechanisms in the context of natural longitudinal variability in streams, and develops models to advance theory and predict the outcome of management decisions. The unifying purpose of her research is to understand the potential influence of global change on fisheries. The questions that interest Dr. Bertrand most in fish ecology are also those that are most pressing: how might the distribution and structure of fish assemblages change under various global change scenarios, and how will altered fish assemblage structure interact with global change to regulate stream ecosystem processes?
Specialties:
Ecology and management of streams and rivers, fish ecology, food web ecology, and invasion biology.
Education:
Ph.D., Kansas State University, 2007
Graduate Certificate in Applied Statistics, Kansas State University, 2007
B.A., Gustavus Adolphus College, 2002
Professional Experience:
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, South Dakota State University. 2007-2008
Graduate Research Assistant, Division of Biology, Kansas State University. 2002-2007
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Biology Department, Gustavus Adolphus College. 2001
Student Intern, Environmental Outcomes Division, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. 2001
Undergraduate Researcher, Biology Department, Gustavus ADolphus College. 2000-2001
Courses Taught at SDSU :
· WL 110 – Environmental Conservation
· WL 220 -- Introduction to Wildlife and Fisheries Management
· WL 367 -- Ichthyology
Syllabus Supplement - Laboratory Schedule
Syllabus Supplement - Writing Assignment
· ABS 475 Integrated Natural Resource Management
Selected Publications:
indicates
the publication is available to download.
Bertrand, K. N., K. B. Gido, W. K. Dodds, J. N. Murdock, and M. R. Whiles. 2009.
Disturbance frequency and functional identity mediate ecosystem processes in
prairie streams. Oikos 118:917-933.
Dodds, W. K., K. C.
Wilson, R. L. Rehmeier, G. L. Knight, S. Wiggam, J. A. Falke, H. J. Dalgleish,
and K. N. Bertrand. 2008. Comparing ecosystem goods and services provided by
restored and native lands. BioScience 58(9):837-845.
Bertrand, K. N. and K. B. Gido. 2007. Effects of
the herbivorous minnow, southern redbelly dace (Phoxinus erythrogaster),
on stream productivity and ecosystem structure. Oecologia 151:69-81.
Bertrand, K. N., K. B. Gido, and C. S.
Guy. 2006. An evaluation of single-pass versus multiple-pass backpack
electrofishing to estimate trends in species abundance and richness in prairie
streams. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 109(3/4):131-138.
Franssen, N. R., K. B. Gido, C. S. Guy, J. A. Tripe, S. J. Shrank, T. R.
Strakosh, K. N. Bertrand, C. M. Franssen, K. L. Pitts, and C. P. Paukert. 2006.
Effects of floods on fish assemblages in an intermittent prairie stream.
Freshwater Biology 51:2072-2086.