Gantz Family Center Collection Manager, Mammals
Gantz Family Collections Center
Adam is an evolutionary ecologist interested in the natural history, conservation, and disease of small carnivores (members of the order Carnivora < 15 kg). He has always been fascinated by animals that must kill to make a living. Even as a child he had an affinity for and dreams of working with hypercarnivores such as mountain lions and jaguarundis. Fortunately, and thanks to some great mentors (e.g. Dr. Robert C. Dowler, Angelo State University), Adam saw the light and moved from charismatic felids to understudied small carnivores like skunks and genets. These equally important, but often overshadowed cousins of the mountain lion, are understudied, overlooked, and often neglected by academic researchers, especially in continental Africa. The existing knowledge gap for this ecologically and evolutionary diverse lineage of mammals forms the foundation for Adam’s current research in Africa and beyond.
Education and Work
B.S. in Wildlife Biology, Southwest Texas State University, 2003
M.S. in Wildlfie Ecology, Texas State University, 2005
M.S. in Biology, Angelo State University, 2008
Ph.D. in Biology, Texas Tech University, 2014
Accomplishments
**Ferguson, A.W., *M. M. McDonough, G. I. Guerra, M. Rheude, J. W. Dragoo, L. K. Ammerman, and R. C. Dowler. (2017) Phylogeography of a widespread small carnivore, the western spotted skunk (Spilogale gracilis*) reveals temporally variable signatures of isolation across western North America. *Ecology & Evolution,*7(12): 4229-4240
Ferguson, A. W., R. E. Strauss, and R. C. Dowler. In press. Beyond black and white: Assessing color variation in the context of local environmental conditions in the aposematic American hog-nosed skunk Conepatus leuconotus. Pp. XX in Small carnivores in space and time: Evolution, ecology, behaviour, and conservation (E. Do Linh San, J. Sato, J. L. Belant & M. J. Somers, eds.). Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.
McDonough, M. M., R. Šumbera, V. Mazoch, A. W. Ferguson, C. D. Phillips, and J. Bryja. (2015) Multilocus phylogeography of a widespread savanna–woodland-adapted rodent reveals the influence of Pleistocene geomorphology and climate change in Africa’s Zambezi region. Molecular Ecology, 24(20): 5248-5266.
Brashear, W. A., A. W. Ferguson, N. N. Negovetich, and R. C. Dowler. (2015) Spatial organization and home range patterns of the American hog-nosed Skunk (Conepatus leuconotus). American Midland Naturalist, 174: 310-320.
Young, H. S., D. J. McCauley, R. Dirzo, J. R. Goheen, B. Agwanda, C. Brook, A. W. Ferguson, F. Keesing, S. N. Kinyua, M. M. McDonough, T. M. Palmer, R. M. Pringle, D. R. Salkeld, T. P. Young, and K. M. Helgen. (2015) Context-dependent effects of large wildli...
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