I am an ecologist that loves connecting with people and with the natural world. I am fascinated by the diversity of interactions occuring all around us (including those with humans) which has shaped my career goals and research interests.
My favorite activities combine reading, doing, watching, and playing – which is why you’ll often find me buzzing around with a heavy bag.
I am a community ecologist whose research integrates exploratory and applied approaches to understand how land-use change and disturbance events reshape ecological communities. My research is rooted in applied ecology and guided by a commitment to community engagement. My doctoral work investigated how severe forest disturbance impacts trophic relationships, and in my current role as Director of the Biodiversity Resources Center at Hudsonia Ltd., I extend this research to examine how landscape-scale patterns influence biodiversity. My projects often involve stakeholders such as municipal agencies, farmers, NGOs, and landowners, ensuring that conservation outcomes are both scientifically rigorous and socially relevant. Using bats as model organisms, I employ bioacoustics, GIS, vegetation surveys, and insect sampling to study species interactions, space use, and foraging behavior. I am particularly interested in how invasive pests and the legacy of white-nose syndrome are shaping forest communities and bat assemblages in the Northeast. By combining ecological theory with community-engaged scholarship, my research advances both academic knowledge and applied conservation practice.
Throughout my career, I have collaborated with landowners, agencies, municipalities, and NGOs across the United States to design projects that address pressing conservation challenges while reflecting local priorities. This approach ensures that my scholarship is both scientifically rigorous and socially meaningful, and it allows me to model for students how ecological research can advance science, strengthen communities, and promote equity in environmental decision-making.
I am interested in food web dynamics and understanding the impacts of climate change on ecological communities. Bats are known to respond to changes in habitat structure and prey availability, and therefore, they offer an excellent perspective estimating how climate change and other human-caused disturbance events alter food web components from both a top-down (bats as predators) and bottom-up (increases in primary productivity) perspective. I use multivariate techniques to identify how these processes are influencing trophic structure and predator-prey relationships.
I like bats, and you should too!
Bats are mysterious creatures that have a wide array of incredible adaptations and have, arguably, the most diverse adaptations across all mammalian orders. Not only do bat species eat a wide variety of things (arthropods, frogs, snakes, blood, fruit, birds, other bats, rodents), but they also have incredibly diverse social dynamics, adaptations for echolocation and sight, and they fly (the only mammals that have powered flight)!
In a few rare instances, bats have been culturally important species, but they are often associated with negative stereotypes. In spite of these stereotypes, scientists have been studying bats and trying to uncover their mysterious ways for centuries. In the 1770’s, for example, European scientists were investigating how bats were able to navigate obstacles in a dark room nearly 170 years before echolocation was put forth in 1938 by Donald Griffin. Even with centuries of study under our belt, our community continues to learn and better understand bat biology and the important roles bats play in ecosystems around the world. Insectivorous bats can suppress nocturnal insects and can, therefore, have top-down effects on food webs such as increased primary production. Bats can be important seed dispersers in disturbed forests, and it appears the plant subfamily, Agavoideae, may have coevolved with pollinating bats in the Americas!
My teaching is grounded in student-centered, research-driven practices that prepare students to become confident, curious, and capable contributors to science. I use active learning strategies that emphasize collaboration and discovery, which have been shown to improve performance and decrease failure rates in STEM courses, particularly for students from underrepresented backgrounds (Freeman et al., 2014; Theobald et al., 2020). By integrating authentic, often field-based, research opportunities into my courses, I help students engage with the full scientific process—an approach that narrows achievement gaps, improves self-efficacy, and strengthens science identity and belonging (Beltran et al., 2020; Esparza & Smith, 2023; Esparza et al., 2024).
I also incorporate flipped-classroom designs and scaffolded assignments to support student ownership of learning, which enhance comprehension, retention, and critical thinking (Akçayır & Akçayır, 2018; Sarquis et al., 2001). My inclusive teaching practices further address barriers in science by connecting ecological concepts with their social and historical contexts, helping students recognize how colonialism, sexism, and racism have shaped the field. These interventions increase students’ awareness of representation in science and their ability to connect scientific knowledge with broader societal structures (Sanchez, Bevan Zientek, & Holt, 2025).
By combining evidence-based pedagogy with authentic research opportunities and inclusive practices, I strive to cultivate learning environments where all students can thrive as scientists.
At Bard College, we explored ecology through a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) in which students studied mammals on campus. Together, we focused on building scientific literacy and inquiry skills, using the C.R.E.A.T.E.S. method to critically read, interpret, and discuss scientific papers while connecting theory to hands-on field and lab projects.
I designed and taught a 300-level ecology course at UNC that followed learner-centered principles including active learning and a Currated Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) to assist the city of Greeley with monitoring efforts after a riverbank restoration on the Wild and Scenic Poudre River. Here are some links of final posters students presented at UNCO's Fall Research Symposium I organized in Fall 2021. All research topics centered on studying the effects of the restoration effort pictured below.
I am the lab coordinator for the Introduction to Anatomy & Physiology course at UNCO (BIO245). I designed virtual labs that we used during the Covid-19 pandemic and have adapted our labs to follow a flipped learning design that follow a hybrid in-person and online format.
Mentorship is central to my identity as a teacher-scholar. I have guided undergraduate and graduate students from diverse backgrounds through every stage of the research cycle, from hypothesis development and fieldwork to statistical analysis, conference presentations, and co-authored publications. At Bard College and the University of Northern Colorado, I designed Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) that connected students directly with local stakeholders such as environmental planners and land stewards, giving them authentic opportunities to see how their contributions mattered to both science and society. As Anatomy Lab Coordinator at UNC, I trained and mentored undergraduate teaching assistants as co-instructors, building peer-learning networks that strengthened classroom learning and student belonging. My approach to mentorship emphasizes inclusivity, transparency, and collaboration, ensuring that all students see themselves as scientists and develop the skills and confidence to pursue diverse careers in ecology, conservation, and beyond.
Yoko was an undergraduate student intern visiting Hudsonia from Bates College in the summer of 2024. I mentored Yoko through the process of study design, acoustic survey techniques, and manual vetting of eastern red bat echolocation calls to compare the activity of eastern red bats in agricultural and rural riparian habitats in the Hudson Valley. We prepared and submitted a manuscript that is currently under review.
Hello, my name is Alex. My involvement in the Adams Bat Lab began soon after I met Amanda in the spring of 2021. I developed a plan to study where tri-colored bats are roosting in northern Colorado and became one of Amanda’s field assistants during the 2021 field season. Although, we never caught any tri-colored bats I still had the chance to do a bit of radio tracking and continue to assist Amanda on ongoing tri-colored bat research. Over the next few years, I hope to continue working in the field of ecology and to begin getting involved in local conservation efforts. Eventually, after gaining more experience and finding a clearer direction within the field of ecology, I would like to return to school to obtain a graduate degree.
In the summer of 2021, I got the opportunity to assist Amanda in her field research on bats as well as perform a smaller inquiry of my own. To help Amanda we performed vegetation surveys, sweep netted insects, and set up acoustic detectors and insect traps. My project for this summer was to collect bat ectoparasites and the relationship between body condition and parasite load. Working in the field was an exciting and challenging experience that kept me on my toes at all times (especially when you’re chased by a moose). I had a ton of fun and would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested. I am currently finishing up the fall semester of my fourth year at UNC and hope to graduate in the spring of 2022. Following graduation, I hope to become an EMT to get further medical experience and apply for medical school in 2023 so I can attend in the fall of 2024.
My research in the field consisted of collecting echolocation calls over ponds in the Red Feather Lakes wilderness area in Colorado to analyze temporal partitioning and water usage of the local bat species in the area. The data I collected was processed by time of night to observe patterns in usage between species as well as better understand what species interacted with the landscape. In the lab, I worked on a comparative morphology project where I measured features of the hindlimb in Seba's Short Tailed bats and compared the growth to a rat at similar developmental stages. I am currently employed in an analytical chemistry lab as a technician and will be applying to graduate programs for the Fall of 2022. My goals are to earn a PhD in Anatomy or Biological Anthropology where I would like to become a professor and pursue more osteology-based research.
I studied the impacts of Mountain Pine Beetle kill on Lodgepole pine forests in the Red Feather Lakes area of Colorado and how the resulting detritus influenced water composition and use of stagnant hardwater ponds by local bat species. I spent my days collecting water samples and testing for compounds like calcium, nitrates, nitrites, pH, etc. and used the values I obtained to plot a graph on the changing water composition. I then cross referenced my data with the data obtained from Tara Hobbs' project. I am now attending graduate school at Iowa State University to obtain my master's degree in biomedical sciences. My current research focuses on Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy and its histological pathologies in the human population with references to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and how the two may interact. I hope to pursue my PhD within the next few years to research preventative cancer therapies by utilizing biological pathways that already exist in nature.
I like taking pictures. Here are a few, but also check out my instagram!
abevanzientek (at) bard.edu
PO Box 5000
Annandale, NY 12504