Graduate Student Awarded Distinguished UNLV Fellowship

Mr. Xavier Glaudas, a doctoral student in the laboratory of Dr. Javier Rodríguez’s, was awarded the President’s Graduate Fellowship, the most prestigious scholarship on the UNLV Campus.

Xavier Glaudas holding a Coachwhip (Masticophis flagellum)

Mr. Glaudas’ dissertation examines the process of habitat selection in the Speckled Rattlesnake (Crotalus mitchellii). Habitat selection is a complex task that is critical for individual fitness, for organisms need to balance the costs and benefits of settling in a specific place. Mr. Glaudas’ project investigates how three factors: abundance of food resources, predation risk, and thermal profile of the environment vary across the landscape, and how they collectively affect habitat choice in a population of Speckled Rattlesnakes from the Mojave Desert of the southwestern U.S. The results of this study could provide valuable information for designing effective conservation measures for vertebrate predators occurring around rapidly expanding metropolitan areas such as Las Vegas, Nevada.

The President's Graduate Fellowships are funded by gifts to the UNLV Foundation by the Frank Koch Living Trust for the research support of doctoral students. The scholarship provides a $20,000 stipend, full tuition and fees, and (if applicable) waiver of out-of-state tuition.