Rate My Professor David Miller

David Miller, a prominent Biology faculty member at Penn State and Professor of Wildlife Population Ecology in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, College of Agricultural Sciences, specializes in population ecology, quantitative ecology, avian and amphibian ecology, conservation decision analysis, and life-history evolution. He earned his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point in 2000, M.S. from Auburn University in 2004, and Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 2009. Miller serves as graduate faculty in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. He teaches Wildlife and Fisheries Population Dynamics (WFS 446) in spring semesters and Classical Ecology (ECLGY 510) in fall semesters. Effective July 1, 2023, he was promoted to full professor, reflecting his impactful contributions to wildlife science.

Miller's research employs advanced statistical models and data integration techniques to estimate species distributions, occupancy rates, and demographic responses to environmental changes. His influential publications include "Improving occupancy estimation when two types of observational error occur: non-detection and species misidentification" (Ecology, 2011, over 460 citations), "Quantitative evidence for the effects of multiple drivers on continental-scale amphibian declines" (Scientific Reports, 2016), "Quantifying climate sensitivity and climate-driven change in North American amphibian communities" (Nature Communications, 2018), "The recent past and promising future for data integration methods to estimate species’ distributions" (Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2019), and "Integrating multiple data sources in species distribution modeling: a framework for data fusion" (Ecology, 2017). Recent works address reptile and amphibian aging processes (2022), range-wide salamander densities in eastern North American forests (Biology Letters, 2024), and demographic consequences of phenological asynchrony for North American songbirds (PNAS, 2023). Through the Applied Population Ecology Lab, Miller advances conservation strategies by quantifying wildlife responses to stressors like climate change, invasive species, and habitat alteration, significantly shaping ecological research and management practices.