SABA Doctoral Dissertation Grant Recipients
2009: Diann Gaalema, Georgia Institute of Technology, Zoo Atlanta
Diann Gaalema is a 5th year graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology with a focus on animal behavior. Her unique program allows her access to animals at the local zoo and botanical gardens where she can apply the principles of behavior analysis to improve the care and management of exotic species. It was a long and interesting road that led to these current circumstances. While pursuing her undergraduate degree at Arizona State University Diann was first introduced to behavior analysis while working in the lab overseen by Dr. Peter Killeen. Her subsequent focus on reptile and amphibian research was a natural transition from the many hours of field work spent pursuing her minor in Biology where she surveyed and studied exotic species in the Sonoran desert and forests of Ecuador. A subsequent internship at the Phoenix Zoo demonstrated a significant opportunity to combine the two interests into a worthwhile career. Ample opportunity existed to use behavioral analysis in the zoo and the diversity of most herpetology departments provided opportunities for research that had high application value as well as the potential for interesting comparative results. At this point, Diann was informed that there was a graduate program available that would allow her to pursue her interest in working with exotic animals at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Once there, under the direction of Dr. M. J. Marr and Dr. Terry Maple, Diann began her work of applying behavioral principles to the exotic reptiles at Zoo Atlanta. Using operant techniques, she has trained large and potentially dangerous animals (Aldabra tortoises and a Komodo dragon) to comply with various husbandry and veterinary procedures. Additionally, she was able to use these techniques for more basic research, studying the learning and discrimination abilities of various types of monitor lizards. Currently, Diann has shifted her focus from operant conditioning to Pavlovian and from reptiles to amphibians. For her dissertation work, she is attempting to use sexual conditioning – a type of Pavlovian conditioning where the conditional stimulus signals access to a member of the opposite sex – to improve breeding outcomes in South American frogs. Recently, amphibians worldwide are suffering great extinction losses due to disease and changing global conditions. Scientists are scrambling to try and preserve at least some of these species for possible reintroduction. Breeding exotics in captivity is problematic, so Diann’s current work is focused on trying to provide another tool to help improve these conservation efforts. After obtaining her degree, Diann hopes to find a faculty position where she can teach while continuing her research. Ideally, she would be able to find a position at a university located near an exotic animal facility where she could replicate the productive research relationship she currently enjoys. She could then establish new relationships between the university and other facilities and continue her work of applying research findings from Psychology to the care and management of exotic animals.
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