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Faculty

Kent A. Hatch

Professor of Biology

B.S., Brigham Young UniversityM.S., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin – Madison

Description

  • Background: Kent Hatch is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Long Island (LIU) University. Prior to joining LIU in 2008, Dr. Hatch was an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University (BYU). Dr. Hatch grew up on Wisconsin, got his B.Sc. in Zoology from Brigham Young University and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Dr. Hatch is a broadly trained biologist, originally training as a physiological ecologist at UW-Madison. As a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, Dr. Hatch studied the energetics of bird flight, following which he had a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nevada, Reno to study the population ecology of Columbia spotted frogs in Nevada. While Dr. Hatch has particular expertise in the use of stable isotope analyses to answer ecological and physiological questions, Dr. Hatch is currently developing expertise in the microbiome of marine invertebrates.
  • Research: The research interests and efforts of Dr. Hatch and his students are broad and varied. Students in Dr. Hatch’s lab are currently working on the population ecology, movements, and demographics of spotted frogs in Nevada, the physiological ecology of six-lined racerunners (a lizard species) studies of American black bear exposure to a variety of diseases and parasites, the effects of anesthesia on black bears, and aspects of black bear hibernation. Students are working with growing and nursing mice as well as zebra finches to better understand the nutritional relationship between nutrition, nursing, growth, and development of mice, dietary and trophic level analysis based on stable isotopes, as well as to develop better methods for stable isotope analysis.
  • However, there are two major foci of research in Dr. Hatch’s lab. The first is the use developing a better understanding of the migration of seabirds, such as Wilson’s storm petrels and great shearwaters as well as their possible use as bioindicators of the health of and changes in food webs of the Gulf of Maine. This is an ongoing study in collaboration with researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Boston University. Second, Dr. Hatch’s lab has an NSF grant to study marine invertebrate microbiome assembly, diversification, and coevolution. Dr. Hatch and his students have placed settlement plates around Long Island and are conducting reciprocal transport experiments to study the effect of location and environment on the microbiome of several invertebrate species.
  • Teaching: Dr. Hatch will teach Bio 271, Marine Biology (combined lecture and lab) and Bio 103L, General Biology I lab during the Fall, 2022 semester. Dr. Hatch regularly teaches Bio 200, Comparative Physiology and Bio 106, Research Methods II. At LIU Dr. Hatch has taught Bio 111, Capstone Seminar, Bio 110, Evolution, Bio 109, Ecology, Bio 105, Research Methods I, Bio 85, Scientific Literacy, and Bio 7 and 8, Human Anatomy and Physiology 1 & 2. Dr. Hatch has also taught special courses on Physiological Ecology (Bio 298, 500) and Desert Bat Ecology (Bio 298, 500) at LIU. At BYU Dr. Hatch taught courses on Biodiversity, Comparative Animal Anatomy and Physiology, Ecology, and Introductory Biology.
  • Publications

Specialties

Physiological Ecology, Stable Isotope Research

Publications

  • Co-author, articles in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, Biological Conservation, Oecologia, the Journal of Comparative Physiology B, Integrative and Comparative Biology and Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics.