Rate My Professor Sybill Amelon

Sybill K. Amelon is a Cooperative Associate Professor - Wildlife in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Missouri - Columbia's College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. Her contributions span Agricultural and Veterinary Science, evident in her wildlife research and teaching in veterinary discovery programs. She holds a Ph.D. (2007) and an M.S. (1991), both from the University of Missouri - Columbia. Amelon also works as a Research Wildlife Biologist at the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station in Columbia, Missouri.

Amelon's research examines the multidimensional relationships among foraging behavior, nutritional needs, nutrient use, and environmental influences in bats. Her primary focus is bat ecology, covering population demography, behavioral ecology, resource selection, habitat use, diet/nutritional analysis, and energy dynamics. She investigates white-nose syndrome (WNS), which causes mortality rates exceeding 75% in affected hibernacula, developing mitigation strategies through integrated disease management combining field ecology, conservation physiology, and nutritional ecology. Methods include radio-telemetry, PIT tags for tracking movements and roosting, and population genetics.

She teaches V_PBIO 5995: Foundations in Veterinary Research and Discovery, mentoring students on bat-related projects. Key publications feature "Contact-independent exposure to Rhodococcus rhodochrous DAP96253 volatiles does not improve the survival rate of white-nose syndrome-affected little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus)" (Hooper and Amelon, 2023) and a study on bat wing prints for individual identification (Amelon et al., 2017, Journal of Mammalogy). With over 700 citations, her work impacts bat conservation, ecosystem services in agriculture, and zoonotic disease prevention.