Dr Kaya Klop-Toker

Dr. Kaya Klop-Toker's research has largely focused on quantifying the impacts of different threats on amphibian populations and investigating possible management solutions. The threats Kaya has worked on include habitat change due to human land use, invasive species, and infection by the amphibian fungal disease (Batrachochytrium dendrobatids, Bd). 

 

Kaya is specifically interested in investigating how different threatening processes interact, and how frogs physiologically and behaviorally respond to these impacts. They combine population, ecology, genetics, and disease data collected from the field with results from controlled laboratory experiments to gain insight into these responses. Kaya is well practiced at designing conservation strategies tailored to individual species and specific threatening processes. A major component of their research is to test these conservation actions in an experimental framework to assess the efficacy of these actions before rolling them out at a larger scale. Successful and cost-effective conservation requires a sound scientific basis, and that is where Kaya is building their research expertise.