Mary Freeman, U.S.Geological Survey)
mary@ttrout.ecology.uga.edu
(706) 542-5181

Mary Freeman is an Assistant Research Ecologist with the U.S.G.S./B.R.D. She received her PhD from The University of Georgia. Her areas of research include river ecology and management; effects of altering streamflow and instream habitat on biological processes that sustain the diversity and abundances of native riverine fauna.

Bud Freeman, Director, Georgia Museum of Natural History
bud@ttrout.ecology.uga.edu
(706) 583-0978

Bud Freeman is a Senior Public Service Associate at the Odum School of Ecology and the Director of the Georgia Museum of Natural History. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Georgia. His areas of resarch include the distribution and abundance of fishes endemic to southeastern systems, in the context of preserving species diversity, and function in streams and rivers increasingly affected by human population development; quantifying basin characteristics in southeastern watersheds harboring remnant endemic communities; systematics and taxonomy of southeastern freshwater fishes.

Megan Hagler, Research Professional
megan@ttrout.ecology.uga.edu
(706) 542 6032

Megan Hagler works as a researcher and lab manager in the Freeman Lab.  Her main research interests include distributions and life history strategies of endemic fishes, quantitative approaches to monitoring fish populations, and preservation of biotic diversity in watersheds with changing land-use.  Ongoing projects involve estimating capture efficiency of Cherokee darters in small streams, assessing the degree with which culverts of different designs are fragmenting stream fish populations by presenting barriers to fish passage through a mark-recapture approach, and water quality monitoring across the Etowah and Conasauga watersheds.  Megan received her BS and MS in Ecology from UGA. Her thesis research related micro-habitat features and natural flow variability in the Etowah River to the probability of occurrence of young-of-year and adult shoal-dependent species, including three imperiled fishes, the amber darter, undescribed Coosa madtom, and undescribed Coosa chub.

Carrie Straight, Research Professional
carrie@ttrout.ecology.uga.edu
(706) 542-4137

Carrie Straight is a researcher and database manager for the Freeman Lab. She creates GIS products for River Basin Center and the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Her research interests include reproduction and behavior of robust redhorse (Moxostoma robustum) and other large-bodied catostomids. Past projects include studying the exotic Asian swamp eel (Monopterus sp. cf. M. albus) at the Chattahoochee Nature Center and Aquatic GAP, diversity analysis for the Upper Coosa Basins. Ongoing projects include the creation of an online freshwater fish distribution atlas for Georgia in cooperation with the Georgia Natural Heritage Program. Carrie received her MS from UGA's Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources with a focus on the effects of experimental prey reduction on the foraging behavior of insectivorous nearctic-neotropical migrant birds in West Virginia and is currently a PhD student at the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia.

Greg Anderson, Graduate Assistant
grega@uga.edu
(706) 542-6032

Greg Anderson is pursuing a Masters in Ecology under the direction of Mary Freeman. Greg is studying the reproductive biology of four imperiled fishes in the Etowah River system, and conducting field sampling and analyses to identify environmental factors that influence the occurrence of two of these fish species restricted to Etowah River headwaters.

Rachel Katz, Graduate Assistant
rachelakatz@gmail.com
(706) 542-6032

Rachel Katz is pursuing an MS in Ecology under the direction of Mary Freeman. She received her BA in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her interests include river ecology, aquatic diversity, and sustainable development practices. She is specifically interested in the natural flow regime and its role in shaping river ecosystems and her research will focus on the effects of altering flow on the distribution and bundance of aquatic invertebrates and fishes in the Middle Oconee River in Athens, GA. She is the inaugural recipient of the Butler Fellowship at the River Basin Center.