Marine Staff Scientist
mary.mcelroy@briwildlife.org

Mary is a marine ecologist whose previous research has focused on understanding coastal species range shifts, as well as developing novel environmental DNA-based approaches to monitor marine biodiversity. She is broadly interested in how climate change alters large-scale species distributions and tackling the technological challenges associated with characterizing complex ecological responses to environmental change and human impacts, including offshore wind development.

Mary joined BRI In 2024 and works in the Center for Research on Offshore Wind and the Environment (CROWE) to provide ecological, technical, and decision science support for programs including the New York State Offshore Wind Environmental Technical Working Group and Project WOW, which focus on wildlife interactions and impacts related to marine renewable energy.

• University of California, Santa Barbara, 2024 – Ph.D, Marine Science – Emphasis in Climate Sciences and Climate Change
• Barnard College, Columbia University, 2015 – B.A., Environmental Biology

• Coastal systems ecology
• Offshore wind-wildlife interactions
• Ecological modeling and statistics
• Bioinformatics
• Genomics approaches for biodiversity monitoring
• Climate-related species range shifts

McElroy, ME, TL Dressler, GC Titcomb, EA Wilson, K Deiner, TL Dudley, EJ Eliason, NT Evans, SD Gaines, KD Lafferty, GA Lamberti, Y Li, DM Lodge, MS Love, AR Mahon, ME Pfrender, MA Renshaw, KA Selkoe & CJ Jerde, 2020. Calibrating environmental DNA metabarcoding to conventional surveys for measuring fish species richness. Frontiers in Ecology & Evolution 8:276. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2020.00276

Jerde, CL, AR Mahon, T Campbell, ME McElroy, K Pin, JN Childress, MN Armstrong, JR Zehnpfennig, SJ Kelson, AA Koning, P Bun Ngor, V Nuon, N So, S Chandra & ZS Hogan, 2021. Are genetic reference libraries sufficient for environmental DNA metabarcoding of Mekong River basin fish? Water 13(13), 1767. doi: 10.3390/w13131767