Education: BS, Wheaton College, 1998; MS, University of North Dakota, 2001; PhD, Pennsylvania State University, 2005. At SPU since 2006.
Eric Long came to SPU from Pennsylvania, where he was born, raised, and went to graduate school, studying wildlife ecology at Penn State University. Since an early age, he has been fascinated with wildlife and sought to combine a love of nature with a passion for education.
At SPU, Dr. Long teaches upper-division courses in ecology, conservation biology, forest ecology, tropical ecology, biostatistics, and vertebrate biology, as well as sections of the introductory biology sequence. His current research focuses on population ecology of black-tailed deer on Blakely Island, Washington, where SPU maintains a field station. He was elected by the SPU student body as Professor of the Year in 2009.
If Dr. Long is not in the lecture hall, there is a good chance he is in his favorite classroom of all: the outdoors. Numerous courses of his are taught at SPU’s field station or abroad, including Winter Break courses in Belize and the Galapagos Islands.
Dr. Long presented the Winter 2022 Weter Lecture on Feburary 22, 2022, entitled "Priests of a Fallen Creation: The Temple, Natural Theology, and Ecology in Dialogue."
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Selected Publications
- Long, E.S., Tham, E.J.* and Ferrer, R.P., 2024. Succession and climatic stochasticity induce long-term decline of a forest browser. PLOS ONE, 19(2): e0298231. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298231.
- Geiman, C.O.* and Long, E.S., 2023. Allometric brain reduction in an insular, dwarfed population of black-tailed deer. Journal of Mammalian Evolution, 30(3), 673-681. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-023-09672-6.
- Long, E.S., D.R. Diefenbach, C.L. Lutz, B.D. Wallingford, and C.S. Rosenberry. 2021. Risky movements? Natal disperal does not decrease survival of a large herbivore. Ecology and Evolution. http://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7227
- Diefenbach, D.R., G.L. Alt, B.D. Wallingford, C.S. Rosenberry, and E.S. Long. 2019. Effect of male age structure on reproduction in white‐tailed deer. Journal of Wildlife Management 83:1368-1376.
- Long, E.S., K.L. Courtney*, J.C. Lippert*, C.M. Wall-Scheffler. 2019. Reduced body size of insular black-tailed deer is caused by slowed development. Oecologia 189:675-685.
- Wallingford, B.D., D.R. Diefenbach, E.S. Long, C.S. Rosenberry, G.L Alt. 2017. Biological and social outcomes of antler point restriction harvest regulations for white-tailed deer. Wildlife Monographs 196:1-26.
- Buderman, F.E., D.R. Diefenbach, C.R. Rosenberry, B.D. Wallingford, and E.S. Long. 2014. Effect of hunter selectivity on harvest rates of radio collared white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania. Journal of Wildlife Management 78:1456-1465.
- Jongejans, E., O. Skarpaas, M.J. Ferrari, E.S. Long, J.T. Dauer, C.M. Schwarz, E.S.J. Rauschert, R. Jabbour, D.A. Mortensen, S.A. Isard, D.A. Lieb, Z. Sezen, A.G. Hulting, K. Shea. 2014. A unifying gravity framework for dispersal. Theoretical Ecology 8:207-223.
* denotes undergraduate student author
Please see Dr. Long's CV (PDF) for additional publications.