Marron Clifford McConnell, PhD
(she/her)
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Fagan Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. I use mathematical and statistical tools to answers questions about population dynamics, demography, sociality, infectious disease and animal movement in real world natural systems. My interests are broad, but my recent work has focused on:
African vultures and the transmission of anthrax among herbivores, vultures, and humans in South Africa and Mozambique
Scimitar-horned oryx in Chad, in partnership with the oryx reintroduction effort of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and its global partners
Caribou in the North American Arctic, with funding from the NSF through the Fate of the Caribou project
Papers under review:
McConnell, M. and Fagan, W. 2025 Drivers of periodicity in population dynamic models of long-lived, large mammals. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09037
Papers in prep:
McConnell, M., Fagan, W., Mertes, K. (in prep) Movement and reproduction shape social behavior in a reintroduced ungulate (Oryx dammah)
McConnell, M., Fagan, W., Kuang, Y. (in prep) Competition, herbivory and digestibility: population dynamics and ecological stoichiometry in a two-producer system