Dr. Katie Holt
Affiliate, former Graduate Student
ORCID: 0000-0002-4384-2713
Dr. Holt is a marine ecologist interested in how seabirds and marine mammals respond to human-driven environmental stressors and how these responses can inform effective management actions. She earned her PhD through the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels at the University of Washington, where her research focused on seabird foraging ecology and the impacts of commercial fishing and climate change. Specifically, she quantified Magellanic penguin foraging, assessed how it is affected by commercial fishing and documented the consequences of an extreme heat mortality event at one of their largest breeding colonies.
During her time at UW, Katie developed a passion for teaching, particularly field-based courses. She values the opportunity to incorporate evidence-based teaching practices and believe that hands-on field experiences are essential for building academic community and nurturing students’ curiosity about the natural world.
Before becoming a PhD student at the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, she worked as the Lab Manager for the Boersma Lab. We still use some of her documentation to this day.
Recent publications
Latest News
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Meet Dr. Katie Holt
Welcome to the next installment of Meet CES, where we get to meet the people behind the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels. Next up is Dr. Katie Holt, who just earned her PhD at the University of Washington! Katie’s been with the Boersma Lab since October 2015, when she was hired to replace Caroline Cappello as…
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Katie Holt attends PSG/Waterbird Society Conference 2025
Written by Katie Holt I kicked off the year by heading the joint meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group and the Waterbird Society in San José, Costa Rica! At the conference, I presented my research on how commercial fishing reduces the rate at which adult seabirds acquire food while foraging. As the only member of…
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Testing Technology with the Woodland Park Zoo
Since 2015, we have deployed automatic weighbridges to track the foraging success of Magellanic penguins at one of their largest breeding colonies – Punta Tombo, Argentina. These weighbridges weigh penguins noninvasively as they leave the nesting area to forage and when they return to feed their chicks. This helps us track whether these penguins are…