Meet the New Everglades Research Station Director, Bryant Dossman, PhD

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In 2026, Bryant Dossman, PhD, joined Audubon as the new director and principal scientist of the Audubon Everglades Research Station (AERS) in Tavernier. Hailing from Newark, New Jersey, his “spark” birds were the House Sparrows that were common in the neighborhood where he grew up.

We sat down with Bryant to learn more about his background and what got him excited about working at Audubon Florida.

Q: At Audubon, we love to ask: What was your flight path? What brought you to Audubon Florida?

A: I have been preparing for an opportunity like this for years, and I feel so lucky to be an ornithologist here at this historic research station. What an amazing place to be. I am excited to follow in the footsteps of my predecessors, particularly Robert Porter Allen, whose studies of Bald Eagles, California Condors, and Whooping Cranes were groundbreaking.

During my undergraduate studies at Bowdoin College in Maine, I got a taste of what a life in science could look like by working on a long-term Savannah Sparrow study at Kent Island, which set me on my current trajectory. I went on to get my M.Sc. from The Ohio State University, where I met my future wife (and current National Audubon Society staff member) Alicia Brunner. I eventually went to Jamaica for my Ph.D. at Cornell University, where I focused on the wintering ecology of American Redstarts.

Before joining the Audubon flock, I held a postdoctoral position at Georgetown University and a research associate appointment at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.  I think I’ll fit in well here because of my background in avian behavior, movement, and population ecology.

Q: What do you see as a future focus of Audubon’s Everglades Research Station?

A: Audubon has spent a lot of time on wading bird populations here, which have been superb indicators of what is going on in the ecosystem from an Everglades restoration perspective. But I think that’s just one side of the story. One taxon that has not been studied here enough is the land bird community that also relies on the restoration efforts in the Everglades but utilizes the environment in slightly different ways than the wading bird community.

A big vision of mine is to understand better how Everglades restoration efforts are ultimately impacting the bird communities more holistically. That includes the residents and migrant land birds and shorebirds that are only here for a few months of the year to the year-round resident wading bird community.

 Understanding individual movement and population dynamics is key to this endeavor as they respond dynamically to the changing ecological conditions of the Everglades ecosystem and ongoing restoration efforts. To do this, I plan to implement a robust bird tracking program that aims at better understanding how environmental conditions and restoration efforts drive individual movement and ultimately scale to impact population dynamics.

Q: What research questions do you hope to answer?

A: There is much we can learn about habitat connections throughout a bird’s full annual cycle, particularly how environmental conditions during the nonbreeding season in one location can carry over to influence breeding effort elsewhere.

I am excited to learn more about how birds use these habitats, even the birds that we only see for a few weeks each season during migration. For example, Eastern Whip-poor-wills that winter here in the Everglades are largely connected to the northeastern population, which is among the most rapidly declining. What is driving that decline?

The Everglades is a massive expanse of habitat that is an important bottleneck for birds coming through the Caribbean to the Florida peninsula. Tracking data shows us that the birds passing through here are getting connected to everywhere, from eastern Nova Scotia to even Alaska, so clearly Florida plays an outsized impact on what these birds need during migration. But how much?

Q: How do you plan to study land birds?

A: One way to monitor habitat use of rare and elusive species is by recording their sounds with acoustic recording units, which are data loggers that constantly record audio data. They can help us better understand where birds are located on the landscape, the habitats they use, and where they aren’t found. Importantly, for our wading bird communities, we can also evaluate where successful nesting occurs by identifying the unique calls of nestlings and juveniles. The method provides a robust way to monitor multiple bird species simultaneously, even in the most remote portions of Florida Bay and Everglades.

Another low-cost way of monitoring birds is to use small Motus stations with a single omni antenna. By establishing a network of these receivers, we can collect data on bird presence and absence within a couple hundred meters of the receiver and understand how birds move across distinct landscape features such as individual keys and foraging areas for wading birds while also tracking the movements of migrants utilizing the Florida Bay seasonally. These data also provide a means to estimate survival, an important demographic that is essential for predicting population-level responses. It’s just another tool in our pocket that we can leverage for understanding the behavior and population dynamics of birds within this ecosystem.

Q: How do you anticipate finding the resources you need to do this work?

In addition to getting science grants and leveraging federal funds, I have collaborators across the western hemisphere with similar interests that can help broaden our research capacity here. Coupled with our fantastic boots-on-the-ground research team and local experts, we can collectively have a big impact.

Ultimately, it boils down to using the data to tell stories. Just listening to the sounds of a key during the middle of the winter season can get someone excited about the work being done. Luckily, Audubon Florida and the National Audubon Society are great storytellers, ultimately helping turn our science into conservation stories that can get everyone on board with the work we are doing here.

Q: How do you envision carrying the Everglades Research Station’s legacy forward into the future?

A: This is an amazing place to train and mentor students and incoming scientists. Students can get a historical perspective of where we have been, a contemporary perspective of what we are doing, and work with us and others to figure out where the science is taking us in the future. Long-term systems are valuable opportunities for mentoring. All factors come together into a great ecological perspective.

Many current staff members at AERS are early-career scientists. My goal is to help them step toward bigger opportunities by broadening their skillsets, with hands-on experience tagging, banding, and tracking birds and doing general fieldwork so they can go out and ask more questions. I hope to establish collaborations with folks at universities to expand our research capacity and help broaden the perspectives our research team is exposed to. Getting more people excited to ask questions is an important aspect of broadening our work.

Q: There is so much to do. How do you stay grounded?

A: I was lucky to get out on the water today, and from the moment we left the dock, it was nonstop nature: manatees, prey fish, Ospreys perched on markers. It was great to be out there, taking a second to slow down and think about what is happening all around us and enjoy watching the birds come in to forage when the tide was dropping. When we are constantly on the go, in meetings, it is easy to forget to breathe and reflect on the science behind the questions we are pursuing. It is important to watch the Prairie Warblers and take some time to think. Nature Rx is real, and it’s an important part of the scientific process.