Jens Hegg, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Biology

I am an ecologist that believes strongly in a broad liberal-arts education and interdisciplinary research approaches. I began my academic career at Macalester College, moving from my hometown of Palouse, Washington to pursue a biology degree. While my...

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Portrait of Dr. Jens Hegg

Contact Information

  • Fall 2024
    Mondays: 9:30-11:30 a.m.
    Thursdays: 1:10-2 p.m.
  • (509) 313-3924

Education & Curriculum Vitae

Ph.D., University of Idaho, 2017

B.A., Macalester College, 2000

Courses Taught

BIOL 303: Population Biology

BIOL 357: Wildlife Management

I am an ecologist that believes strongly in a broad liberal-arts education and interdisciplinary research approaches. I began my academic career at Macalester College, moving from my hometown of Palouse, Washington to pursue a biology degree. While my passion has always been ecology, my career included significant detours into analytical chemistry and medical device engineering. Eventually, I combined my skills and interests, earning a PhD degree studying fish migration using chemical records stored in the ear bones of salmon. My current research includes studies of trout and salmon in the Pacific Northwest as well as “goliath” catfish and critically endangered sawfish in Amazon region of Brazil.

* denotes student co-author

2022

Chittaro, P., Jens C. Hegg, Abby Fuhrman, Devin Robichaux, Rothboury Doung, Brian Beckman, Chris Fisher, Jeff Vervoort, and Brian Kennedy. 2022. “The incorporation of environmentally derived 87Sr/86Sr and Sr/Ca in early otolith formation of Chinook salmon” Ecology of Freshwater Fish. DOI:

2021

Hegg, Jens C., Brian P. Kennedy. “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again: Non-linear time-series matching as a tool for mining temporally structured data in ecology” Ecosphere. DOI:

Hegg, Jens C., *Breanna Graves, Chris M. Fisher. “Sawfish, Read in Tooth and Saw: rostral teeth as endogenous chemical records of movement and life-history in a critically endangered species” Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. DOI:

*Carine G. Moraes, Jens C. Hegg, Tommaso Giarrizzo, Marcelo C. Andrade. “Feeding behavior and trophic niche partitioning between co-existing river otter species” Hydrobiologia. DOI:

2019

Chittaro, P. M., Jens C. Hegg, Brian P. Kennedy, Laurie A. Weitkamp, Lyndal L. Johnson, Cynthia Bucher, Richard W. Zabel. “Juvenile river residence and performance of Snake River fall Chinook salmon” Ecology of Freshwater Fish DOI:

2018

Hegg, Jens C., Brian P. Kennedy, Paul Chittaro. “What did you say about my mother? The complexities of maternally derived chemical signatures in otoliths” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. DOI:

Hegg, Jens C., Jonathan Middleton, Ben Luca Robertson. “The Sound of Migration: Exploring data sonification as a means of interpreting multivariate salmon movement datasets” Heliyon. DOI:

2015

Hegg, Jens C., Tommaso Giarrizzo, Brian P. Kennedy. “Diverse Early Life-History Strategies in Migratory Amazonian Catfish: Implications for Conservation and Management”. PLOS One. DOI:

2013

Hegg, Jens C., Brian P. Kennedy, Alex K. Fremier. “Predicting fish location using otoliths and bedrock geology: Understanding the effects of geologic heterogeneity”. Chemical Geology. DOI:

Hegg, Jens C., Brian P. Kennedy, Paul M. Chittaro, and Richard W. Zabel. "Spatial structuring of an evolving life-history strategy under altered environmental conditions." Oecologia. DOI:

How do animals, in the midst of a patchy and variable landscape, balance the resources and risks they know in the now, against the unknown risks and rewards in a future they cannot know?

I am interested in how animals solve this balancing act. Migratory species must not only balance risks and rewards through time, but also across space as they make lengthy migrations. Rewards like faster growth or higher survival rarely occur across the entire migratory path, nor do the risks. In fish, where most of my research is focused, these important drivers of migration behavior are often hyper-local, related to environmental conditions and community ecology at the scale of individual tributaries or river reaches.

To uncover these ecological interactions I use field research methods in addition to isotopic records stored within fish themselves. Hard parts such as teeth, scales, or otoliths (ear stones) record a detailed record of fish movements and life-history. Recovering them allows us to understand details of fish migration that are otherwise hidden.