Tyler Pilger is a fisheries biologist with extensive experience in population genetics and community ecology of freshwater fishes in the Great Plains and desert Southwest, USA. He has experience with electrofishing, mark-recapture studies using PIT and VIE tags, and radio telemetry of fish. Additionally, he has a wide array of sample collection and laboratory experiences that include genetic, stable isotope, diet, geometric-morphometric, and otolith microchemical analyses. His quantitative skills include univariate and multivariate statistics, genetic analyses, simulation, programming in both R and Python languages, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Tyler’s professional research focuses on landscape-scale factors associated with patterns of fish abundance, as well as genetic and demographic resilience to disturbance. He also assists in study design, statistical analysis, and technical reporting for a variety of complex research projects. Tyler holds a Ph. D. in Biology from the University of New Mexico, where he studied conservation genetics of threatened and endangered fishes and the influence of interspecific life-history differences on population genetics. He received a M.Sc. in Biology at Kansas State University studying the effects of nonnative predators on native fish trophic dynamics
Eschenroeder, J.C., M.L. Peterson, M. Hellmair, T.J. Pilger, D. Demko, and A. Fuller. 2022. Counting the parts to understand the whole: Rethinking monitoring of steelhead in California’s Central Valley. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, 20(1). DOI: 10.15447/sfews.2022v20iss1art2
Pilger, T., M. Peterson, D. Lee, A. Fuller, and D. Demko. 2019. Evaluation of long-term mark-recapture data for estimating abundance of juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon on the Stanislaus River from 1996 to 2017. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 17. DOI: 10.15447/sfews.2019v17iss1art4
Pilger, T.J., K.B. Gido, D.L. Propst, J.E. Whitney, and T.F. Turner. 2017. River network architecture, abundance, and distributional patterns predict differences in genetic structure across species in a dryland stream fish assemblage. Molecular Ecology 26: 2687 – 2697. DOI: 10.1111/mec.14079
Pilger, T.J., K.B. Gido, D.L. Propst, J.E. Whitney and T.F. Turner. 2015. Comparative conservation genetics of protected endemic fishes in an arid-land riverscape. Conservation Genetics 16: 875-888. DOI: 10.1007/s10592-015-0707-3.
Pilger, T. J., K. B. Gido, and D. L. Propst. 2010. Diet and trophic niche overlap of native and nonnative fishes in the Gila River, USA: implications for native fish conservation. Ecology of Freshwater Fish 9: 300-321. DOI:
Pilger, T. J., N. R. Franssen, and K. B. Gido. 2008. Consumption of native and nonnative fishes by introduced largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) in the San Juan River, New Mexico. The Southwestern Naturalist 53:105-108. DOI: 10.1894/0038-4909(2008)53[105:CONANF]2.0.CO;2