Rate My Professor Jesse Lewis

Jesse Lewis is an Associate Professor in the School of Applied Sciences and Arts within the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University Polytechnic campus, where he was appointed as Assistant Professor in 2017. He directs the Applied Ecology Lab, which investigates applied ecology and the conservation of wildlife populations through the integration of wildlife biology, landscape ecology, and community ecology principles. His research examines how urbanization, landscape modifications, wildfires, invasive species, and other disturbances affect species distributions, abundances, habitat relationships, space use, activity patterns, and interspecific interactions. Employing methods such as GPS and VHF telemetry, motion-activated cameras, acoustic monitoring, occupancy modeling, machine learning, and GIS analyses, Lewis studies mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, invertebrates, and plants across the western United States and North America. Key projects include evaluating wildlife responses to urban gradients in the Phoenix metropolitan area via the NSF-funded Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER), invasive wild pig dynamics, post-wildfire habitat use by large herbivores and carnivores, and landscape connectivity along rivers and canals. He holds affiliations as Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and interdisciplinary faculty in the School of Life Sciences.

Lewis received his Ph.D. in Ecology from Colorado State University in 2014, with a dissertation on the effects of urbanization on felid populations, interactions, and pathogen dynamics under advisor Kevin Crooks. He earned an M.S. from the University of Idaho in 2007, analyzing human influences on black bear habitat selection and highway crossings under Janet Rachlow, and a B.S. with honors in Wildlife Biology and high honors in Plant Biology from the University of Montana in 2003. From 2014 to 2017, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Conservation Science Partners, focusing on wild pig ecology in collaboration with USDA agencies and universities. Earlier roles encompassed graduate research, instructing landscape ecology at Idaho, and biological technician positions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project, Kenai and Innoko National Wildlife Refuges, and U.S. Forest Service. Lewis has published extensively, with highly cited papers including "Analyzing animal movements using Brownian bridges" (Ecology, 2007), "Effects of habitat on GPS collar performance: using data screening to reduce location error" (Journal of Applied Ecology, 2007), "Machine learning to classify animal species in camera trap images: Applications in ecology" (Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2019), and recent contributions like "When the wild things are: Defining mammalian diel activity and plasticity" (Science Advances, 2025) and "Landscape modification and species traits shape seasonal wildlife community dynamics within an arid metropolitan region" (Landscape and Urban Planning, 2025). He serves on the Ecosphere editorial board, contributing to advancements in wildlife science and management.