Rate My Professor Jonathan Armstrong

Jonathan Armstrong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences at Oregon State University. He earned a B.A. in Biology from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, in 2005 and a Ph.D. from the School of Fishery and Aquatic Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2013. After completing his doctorate, Armstrong held a David H. Smith Postdoctoral Conservation Research Fellowship at the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Wyoming, from 2013 to 2015. He joined Oregon State University as an Assistant Professor in 2016 and advanced to Associate Professor. Earlier roles include Research Associate at the University of Washington and Scientific Collaborator on a National Geographic Society project in Cambodia. His research integrates animal behavior, physiology, and landscape ecology to understand how fish and wildlife interact with their environments. Armstrong investigates how watershed physical features influence consumer energy budgets, population dynamics, and ecosystem services, using observational studies, field experiments, and simulation modeling. His studies address climate change impacts on cold-water fish like salmon and trout, thermal refuges, habitat fragmentation, resource phenology, and interactions between salmon and predators such as brown bears.

Armstrong has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, with key works including "Excess digestive capacity in predators reflects a life of feast and famine" (Nature, 2011), "Diel horizontal migration in streams: juvenile fish exploit spatial heterogeneity in thermal and trophic resources" (Ecology, 2013), "Portfolio effects in ecology and evolution" (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2015), "The importance of warm habitat to the growth regime of cold-water fish" (Global Change Biology, 2021), and "Foodscapes for salmon and other mobile consumers in river networks" (2024). His research has received over 3,600 citations. Awards include the David H. Smith postdoctoral fellowship (2013), Roy Jensen Fellowship (2011), and Vincent Liguori Endowment Scholarship (2010). He advises undergraduate and graduate students in fisheries and wildlife and maintains affiliations such as Associate Scientist at Conservation Science Partners.