Rate My Professor Ursula Ellenberg

Ellenberg's research interests include conservation physiology to predict organism responses to environmental stressors; behavioural ecology exploring individual differences in stress-coping styles, foraging strategies, reproductive success, and survival; marine ecology and at-sea behaviour of seabirds; population ecology and conservation biology of seabirds; and citizen science. She teaches courses such as MARI 112 Marine Biology: The Living Ocean, MARI 302 Biology and Behaviour of Marine Vertebrates, MARI 429 Coastal Marine Environment, and ECOL 111 Ecology and Conservation of Diversity. She currently supervises postgraduate students on topics including the foraging ecology of tawaki in Dusky Sound, thermoregulation in little penguins, dive physiology of Fiordland penguins, yellow-eyed penguin foraging on Stewart Island, and GPS tracking of Whenua Hou diving petrels. Key publications encompass 'Vulnerability of marine megafauna to global at-sea anthropogenic threats' (Conservation Biology, 2025), 'Population structure of three New Zealand crested penguins identifies current conservation challenges for the Fiordland penguin/tawaki' (PLoS ONE, 2025), 'A Jack of all trades: Tawaki/Fiordland penguins are able to utilise diverse marine habitats during winter migration' (PeerJ, 2025), 'Inter-colony and inter-annual behavioural plasticity in the foraging strategies of a fjord-dwelling penguin' (PeerJ, 2025), 'High definition video loggers provide new insights into behaviour, physiology, and the oceanic habitat of a marine predator, the yellow-eyed penguin' (2018), and 'Heart rate responses provide an objective evaluation of human disturbance stimulus in a wild seabird' (Conservation Physiology, 2013). Her contributions advance understanding of human-wildlife interactions and seabird conservation.