After Humboldt, Marlene went on to earn a PhD at Simon Fraser University.

  For her Humboldt thesis, Marlene’s study provided information on how Red-breasted Sapsuckers, a keystone species and ecological engineer, are distributed in wilderness forests and what habitat covariates are important for foraging and nesting sites. As most studies of landbirds in Southeast Alaska have been conducted in disturbed forests, information provided by this research contributed a baseline reference for the effects of management activities.