Research

Responses of populations under harvesting pressure to environmental variability

Harvested populations may experience profound changes to demographic structure as well as change (evolutionary or non-evolutionary) in traits ranging from body size to behavior. I aim to determine how these changes might interact with populations' ecology, their traits and evolutionary history, and their response to environmental changes. I am using individual-based bioenergetic modeling of multiple harvested species to determine when the plastic and evolutionary effects of harvest and exogenous resource changes are expected to result in overall stasis or change for traits like age and size at maturity and size-at-age, as well as the underlying bioenergetic traits setting these life history traits. We are also parameterizing a version of this model for the small, fast-life-history poeciliid fish Heterandria formosa, with which we are conducting a multi-generation harvest selection experiment which will generate results that can be compared to model predictions. I will also be in residence for 10 weeks at the National Museum of Natural History in DC in 2022 through the  Smithsonian 10-Week Graduate Fellowship, collecting measurements and samples for isotopic analysis from Chesapeake Bay region specimens of three harvested groundfish species to study trait and trophic level change through time.

Signatures of ecological state flips along spatial gradients

For this research, I have worked with Tim Wootton at the University of Chicago in developing an agent-based model of mussel bed lower boundary formation and comparing model results to theoretical predictions and field data.

Elevational gradients of morphological diversity in birds and latitudinal gradients in ecological diversity in birds and marine bivalves

This undergraduate research was supported by the UChicago Department of Ecology and Evolution, the NSF, and the Chicago Field Museum collections, and resulted in two publications:

*equal contributors