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Doug Sigourney (CV)

Contact Info:
Conte Anadromous Fish Research Center, USGS/BRD
PO Box 796
Turners Falls, MA 01376

email: dsigourn@nrc.umass.edu
phone: (413)863-3800

UMass Web Page: http://nrc.umass.edu/index.php/people/graduate-students/sigourney-doug
Canadian Rivers Institue: http://www.unb.ca/cri/

Title: Research Assistant

Education:
1998 - Bachelor of Science, Zoology, University of New Hampshire
2002 - Master of Science, Fisheries Conservation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst


Research Interests:
I am interested in factors that shape growth rates in juvenile salmonids.  Growth is a dynamic process that involves the acquisition of resources and the partitioning of energy into body constituents such as protein and fat.  There are a number of ways to model growth rates that include simple linear models to more processed based models such as bioenergetic models and dynamic energy budget models.  The approach taken often depends on 1) the questions being asked and 2) the resolution of the data.  The primary goal of my research is to model growth rates of individually tagged salmon repeatedly captured in small streams.  Estimation of model parameters will be done in a Bayesian state-space framework that allows the incorporation of both measurement error and process error.  The model is derived from first principles of growth and thus has a general applicability.  In addition, the model includes a seasonal food function that allows inference of the food environment experienced by a group of individual over the course of a growth season.

In addition to modeling growth I am also interested in survival analysis.  Analysis of mark-recapture data is a burgeoning field and new methods and approaches are constantly being developed.  An ultimate goal is to embed a growth model in the analysis of survival to understand the effect of a time-varying covariate such as length-at-age on survival.

 

Publications:
Sigourney, D.B., B.H. Letcher, M. Obedzinski, and R.A. Cunjak.2008.  Size-independent growth in fish: patterns, models and metrics. J. Fish Biol. 72(10): 2435-2455.

Sigourney, D. B., B. H. Letcher, and R. A. Cunjak. 2006. Influence of beaver activity on summer growth and condition of age-2 Atlantic salmon parr. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 135(4): 1068-1075.

Sigourney, D. B., G. E. Horton, T. L. Dubreuil, A. M. Varaday, and B. H. Letcher. 2005. Electroshocking and PIT tagging of juvenile Atlantic salmon: Are there interactive effects on growth and survival? North American Journal of Fisheries Management 25(3): 1016-1021.