Lab Personnel

Ryne Huggins is a research technician working in the Tuberville Lab at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Ryne is originally from Newberry, South Carolina, and received a B.S. in Parks and Conservation Area Management, with a minor in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology in 2020 from Clemson University. Ryne also played on the Clemson baseball team for 4 years during his time as an undergraduate, as well as a 5th year as a graduate student with the University of Houston baseball team. Ryne’s wildlife experience as an undergrad includes assisting as an intern-technician on Project Pine Snake, a multi-year project aimed at researching and assessing the current status of populations of true upland Northern Pine Snakes in areas of Northern Georgia, Eastern Alabama, and portions of the upstate of South Carolina. Primary research methods used were live trapping, radio telemetry, and SFD (Snake Fungal Disease) swabbing. Ryne also conducted his own undergraduate research under Dr. Robert Baldwin while at Clemson. His research was conducted over 2 years at Table Rock State Park, and involved basic snake species inventory and social science surveys, focused on the abundances and public perceptions of eastern copperheads and northern watersnakes. Ryne has also volunteered over the past 2 years for SCDNR on a joint project with SREL assisting with efforts to restore gopher tortoise populations within a longleaf pine savanna in Aiken County, SC. Ryne hopes to one day pursue his M.S. in the field of Landscape Ecology, with a focus on snakes and/or crocodilians and their ecological impacts in the environment. While at SREL, he will be helping with small vertebrate surveys at a coal-fly ash impacted site and reference site, and a radio-telemetry and reproductive study of eastern box turtles.

Ryan Joseph Rimple is a research technician working in the Tuberville Lab at the Savannah River Ecology Lab. Ryan is originally from the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania and received a B.S. in wildlife conservation in 2021 from Juniata College. As an undergraduate, Ryan conducted research on freshwater turtles that included guiding habitat management activities to benefit turtles, studying the overwintering ecology of spotted turtles, and surveying for eastern box turtles on college-owned property. Ryan’s other research experience includes interning for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service where he worked on a wood turtle head-starting project (with SREL scientist Kurt Buhlmann) and assisted with bog turtle surveying and monitoring. At SREL, Ryan will be working under Drs. Tracey Tuberville and Kurt Buhlmann to evaluate the success of reintroductions of formerly captive eastern box turtles into the wild, as well as investigating mercury contaminant levels in historic reptile specimens collected from the Savannah River Site. 

Emma Angelina Browning is a Masters student at the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. She is originally from the panhandle of Texas, where she received her bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology at West Texas A&M University in 2015. Her past research experience involves tracking eastern massasauga rattlesnakes using radio telemetry to monitor translocation efforts on Camp Grayling in Michigan. Emma most recently comes from Florida, where she assisted in population monitoring and habitat restoration for the reticulated flatwoods salamander, and aided in gopher tortoise surveys and translocation efforts on Eglin Airforce Base. Under the guidance of Dr. Tracey Tuberville and Dr. Kurt Buhlmann, Emma’s research project will evaluate the suitability of confiscated box turtles for release into the wild. 

Kelly Holland is a Master’s student at the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. She is originally from Flemington, New Jersey and received her B.S in Wildlife Conservation and Ecology from the University of Delaware in 2017. As an undergraduate, she researched habitat suitability for coyote (Canis latrans) throughout the state of Delaware as their range and populations expanded. After she graduated, she worked for the U.S Forest Service in Arizona and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service in Florida helping with research and recovery projects for threatened and endangered species including Mexican spotted owls, Mt. Graham red squirrels, frosted flatwoods salamanders, red-cockaded woodpeckers, and loggerhead sea turtles. Most recently she was a biological technician at Florida Panther NWR in southwest Florida. Under the direction of Dr. Tracey Tuberville and in collaboration with Dr. Stacey Lance and other SREL researchers, Kelly’s graduate research will compare the biological communities of historically contaminated areas to reference sites within the Savannah River Site.

Laura Kojima is a Master’s student at the University of Georgia’s Odum School of Ecology. She is originally from San Diego, California and received her B.S. in Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology from the University of California-Davis in 2019. As an undergraduate, she investigated the response of habitat disturbance and salinity variation in Western Pond turtles (Actinemys marmorata) and managed her own head-start of hatchling Western Pond turtles. After graduating, she remained in Northern California and worked with USGS on their Giant Gartersnake (Thamnophis gigas) and San Francisco Gartersnake (Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia) demography and occupancy studies and habitat surveys. Under the co-direction of Drs. Tracey Tuberville and Benjamin Parrott, Laura’s graduate research will focus on assessing the behavioral effects of mercury contaminant loads in American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) and potential exposure concerns associated with the public harvest and consumption of alligators.

Susanna Mann is earning her Master’s of science degree at University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources under the direction of Dr. Tracey Tuberville. She is originally from the Greater St. Louis area, but graduated from Union University in Tennessee with a Bachelor's degree in Conservation Biology. Since graduating she has worked in New York, Indiana, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan doing various conservation work from vegetation monitoring, prescribed fire, Sea turtle nesting protection, Whooping Crane monitoring, and wildlife rescue on construction sites. Her graduate research, based at the Ivanpah Desert Tortoise Research Facility, will focus on the effectiveness of head-starting in Mojave Desert Tortoises as a mitigation tool to increase juvenile survival. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Kurt Buhlmann (SREL) and Dr. Brian Todd (University of California-Davis). Susanna is interested in research that informs practical conservation strategies for endangeredand threatened species, wetland and landscape ecology, and public education of conservation.

Collin Richter is a graduate student in the Tuberville Lab and in the master’s program at UGA’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. He is from Canton, Michigan and obtained his Bachelors in Zoology from Northern Michigan University in 2017. As an undergraduate, he took part in research studying common mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus) distribution, as well as interspecific interactions of stream fishes. During a biology trip to St. John, US Virgin Islands in 2016, he implemented a herpetofaunal inventory of Virgin Islands National Park, returning to the island in 2018 to examine the herpetofaunal community response to Hurricanes Irma and Maria. After graduation, Collin worked for the Martin Lab at Warnell, studying northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) and gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus), and spent a year assisting in rattlesnake research on Jekyll Island, GA. His master’s research focuses on the survival and movement of head-started Mojave desert tortoises at the Ivanpah Desert Tortoise Research Facility in California, as well as the effects of common raven (Corvus corax) predation on juvenile tortoise recruitment. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Kurt Buhlmann (SREL) and Dr. Brian Todd of University of California-Davis. Collin’s research interests include movement and spatial ecology, as well as conservation and recovery of imperiled species.

Kurt Buhlmann is a conservation ecologist whose research interests include life history and evolutionary ecology with application for conservation and management of amphibians and reptiles. He has worked with non-profit, state, and federal agencies on habitat management projects, including prescribed fire and wetlands restoration. He and Tracey are co-PIs and collaborate on several reintroduction projects for tortoises and freshwater turtles. They also both serve as mentors to students and technicians working on these projects. Kurt Buhlmann is a Research Associate at University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Lab. View Kurt's ResearchGate profile.