Team Archbold Avian Ecology

Sahas Barve,
​Program Director of Avian Ecology

Sahas is the Program Director of Avian Ecology (lead bird nerd) at Archbold Biological Station. Sahas is Indian American. He enjoys birding, cooking, listening to, and singing ghazals. ​

Meredith Heather 
Research Assistant IV

Meredith has been with Archbold Biological Station since 2018, currently working as Research Assistant IV in the Avian Ecology Program. She recently completed her Master’s in Environmental Science at Florida Gulf Coast University.

​Conducting research at Archbold, her thesis focused on the influence of habitat structure on Florida Scrub-Jay behavior. Prior to Archbold, she has been involved in other avian studies in a variety of places including Texas, California, South Carolina, and Costa Rica, with her favorite being in the Peruvian Amazon studying mixed-species flocks. Outside of work, she enjoys birding, camping, kayaking, and being a plant mom.

Tori Bakley 
Research Assistant III

Tori Bakley joined Archbold's Avian Ecology program as a 2021 intern and has been full-time with the program since. Her work on conservation sites throughout central Florida has strengthened her love for the natural beauty of her home state. After graduating with degrees in Biology and Anthropology from Florida State University, she spent two years with research projects around the globe, which included observing wild orangutans in the primary rainforests of Borneo and monitoring Acorn Woodpeckers in the hills and valleys of central California. She hopes to continue contributing towards the conservation of threatened species and spaces through her fieldwork.

Kelly Roberts
Research Assistant III

Kelly graduated from Canisius College in 2018 she worked at Appledore Island Migration Station and New Hampshire Audubon before starting at Archbold as an intern in 2019. Kelly has been involved in projects examining breeding female dominance, incest, and extra pair paternity in Florida Scrub-Jays. She is currently looking to attend graduate school to study behavioral ecology.

Team Mountain Bird Research

                       Sahas Barve
Sahas has been studying birds on mountains for over a decade. He currently uses a mix of field and museum-based approaches to understand  montane avian ecology and evolution. Check out his mountain birds research section for more information. ​

                 Mariana Quintero
Mariana is a Colombian biologist and aspiring ornithologist highly interested in the evolution of feather morphology and coloration patterns. My research explores feather adaptations in response to climate conditions such as temperature and rainfall in Andean birds.

Currently, she is a Research Associate at Alliance & Bioversity CIAT in Colombia where I work with e-kakashi technology to develop smart agriculture in Ecuador, Brazil, Uzbekistan and Mongolia.

Harish Prasad Maithani

Pranav Gokhale

Harish works as a professional bird guide and field assistant on various projects on the biology of Himalayan flora and fauna. Since he started working with Sahas in 2013, we has worked on birds, Himalayan langurs, mountain ungulates and pikas. You can find Harish's wonderful nature images here. 

 I am interested in studying species' elevational ranges and their responses to climate change. Previously, I was a master's student at the Wildlife Institute of India where I  worked on mixed-species bird flocks along an elevational gradient in the Western Himalaya. When I'm not doing research, I love to be outside, watching and photographing anything and everything, singing ghazals and listening to the Indian classical music. Shoot me an email if you want to chat about birds, mountains, and the impacts of climate change on biodiversity.