Ashley Elgin
Past Postdoctoral Research Fellow
In the News:
- Invasive mussels, other factors slam commercial fishery, Everything Business Corp!, 8/15/2019
- Invasive mussels slam commercial fishery, Traverse City Record Eagle, 7/4/2019
- Invasive mussels challenge commercial whitefish fishing in the Great Lakes, Spartan News Room, 5/19/2019
- Is too many mussels even possible?, NOAA Research News, 8/11/2017
- NOAA GLERL collaborating with partners to monitor the Lake Huron ecosystem, NOAA GLERL Blog, 5/30/2017
Photo Gallery
NOAA GLERL’s Research Scientist Ashley Elgin preparing to process mussels collected from her 12 month field growth experiment. March 28, 2017. Photo Credit: Michele Wensman.
Tom Nalepa, GLERL Emeritus with Ashley Elgin, GLERL and Paul Glyshaw, CIGLR at IAGLR 2017. Photo Credit: Michele Wensman.
NOAA GLERL’S Research Scientist Ashley Elgin displaying the cages removed from her Lake Michigan quagga mussel growth mooring. March 27, 2017. Photo Credit: Paul Glyshaw.
NOAA GLERL’S Research Scientist Ashley Elgin removing the settling plate from her Lake Michigan quagga mussel growth mooring. March 27, 2017. Photo Credit: Paul Glyshaw.
June 2017 NOAA GLERL Scientist Ashley Elgin and CIGLR Ecosystems Research Tech Paul Glyshaw on CSMI Lake Huron Quagga Mussel Growth Experiment Cruise. Photo Credit: NOAA GLERL.
L-R: Dr. Tom Johengen (CIGLR), Shelby LaBuhn (UWM) and Dr. Ashley Elgin (NOAA GLERL). Shelby presents her gradaute research at NOAA. Photo Credit: Michele Wensman.
GLERL scientists Steve Pothoven, Ashley Elgin, Jeff Elliot, Aaron Dunnuck, and Sea Grant’s Rochelle Sturtevant lead activities during the Muskegon County 3rd Grade Water Festival on September 21-22, 2017. Photo Credit: NOAA GLERL.
Profile:
Dr. Ashley Elgin is a research benthic ecologist with the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL). She currently studies the invasion ecology of dreissenid mussels out of the NOAA GLERL Lake Michigan Field Station, evaluating these invasive species’ impacts on native food webs and predicting their future distributions. A northern Michigan native, Dr. Elgin studied biology at Michigan Technological University, Smith College, and University of Notre Dame, receiving her doctorate from the latter with her dissertational research on the invasive rusty crayfish.
While her current focus lies in zebra and quagga mussels, Dr. Elgin has researched and published on both marine and freshwater ecosystems, studying a variety of invasive species and how they can be managed across spatial and temporal scales. She also has investigated climate change and pollution’s effects on Great Lakes ecology relative to native and invasive community members.
Education:
- Ph.D. in Biology, University of Notre Dame (2013)
- M.S. in Biology, Smith College (2006)
- B.S. in Biology, Michigan Technological University (2001)
Research Interest/Area of Expertise:
- Aquatic Invasive Species
- Climate Change
- Dreissenid Mussels
- Limnology
Recent Publications:
Bunnell, D.B., S.A. Pothoven, P.M. Armenio, L. Eaton, D.M. Warner, A.K. Elgin, L.E. Burlakova and A.Y. Karayayev. 2019. Spatiotemporal variability in energetic condition of alewife and round goby in Lake Michigan. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, (DOI:10.1139/cjfas-2018-0391). [Altmetric Score]
Marino, J.A., S.D. Peacor, D.B. Bunnell, H.A. Vanderploeg, S.A. Pothoven, A.K. Elgin, J.R. Bence, J. Jiao and E.L. Ionides. 2019. Evaluating consumptive and nonconsumptive predator effects on prey density using field times series data. Ecology. (DOI:10.1002/ecy.2583). [Altmetric Score]
Merzel, R.L., L. Purser, T.L. Soucy, M. Olszewski, I. Colon-Bernal, M.B. Duhaime, A.K. Elgin and M.M. Banaszak Holl. 2019. Uptake and Retention of Nanoplastics in Quagga Mussels. Global Challenges. Global Challenges. (DOI:10.1002/gch2.201800104)
Recent Presentations:
Elgin, A.K. 2019. NOAA’s Role in the Community: Science Serving Society. AMBUCS Meeting, Muskegon, Michigan. February 12, 2019.
Sturtevant, R.A., F. Martinez, E. Lower, E.S. Rutherford, D.M. Mason and A.K. Elgin. 2018. Assessing the Impacts of Aquatic Invasive Species in the Great Lakes Basin Upper Midwest Invasive Species Conference Mayo Civic Center – Rochester, MN, October 16, 2018. UMISC and North American Invasive Species Management Assoc.
Elgin, A.K. and P. Glyshaw. 2018. Depth and season-specific trends in invasive quagga mussel growth and implications for ecological impacts. Society for Freshwater Sciences 2018 meeting, Detroit, Mich., May 21-24, 2018.