Research Interests

My aim is to develop efficient molecular biodiversity assessment pipelines that leverage genomic, spatial, and ecological information to capture global change phenomena of the world’s biotas.

I received my PhD from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at University of California, Berkeley after working with Dr. Rosemary Gillespie. I have a MS Biology from Sonoma State University where I worked with Dr. Derek Girman and Dr. Brian Fisher investigating a group of ants from Madagascar that have specialized across the island due to divergent colony reproductive strategies and variable microhabitats.

I am broadly interested in species diversification mechanisms of insular fauna and how communities change over time; in particular, how anthropogenic changes are altering species interactions and potentially driving rapid evolution. To investigate these questions I study arthropod communities in the Hawaiian archipelago that include endemic and native species as well as accidental and purposeful introductions. I exploit the natural occurrence of age-structured terrains on the archipelago that represent communities in an assembly continuum at sites dating from 44 years to 5.5 million years in geological age.

Current Projects

• Biodiversity Dynamics of Arthropod and Plant Communities on an Island Archipelago using Quantitative NGS Metabarcoding and Literature Mining

• Species Delimitation and Phylogeography of Endemic Hawaiian Parasitoid Wasps: Genus Spolas (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae)

• Next-generation Sequencing for Assessment of Agent Evolution and Post-introduction Non-target Effects in Hawaiian Rainforest Communities

• Timing of Colonization and Diversification of a Genus of Hawaiian Diurnal Web Building Spiders with Extensive Gene Flow

• New Mosquito Blood Meal Analysis Method: Tracking Mosquito Predation and Community Interaction Using DNA Metabarcoding Honors thesis Blake Stoner-Osborne

• Gut Microbiome Diversity of Native and Introduced Herbivorous Arthropods Feeding on Native or Introduced Plants Honors thesis Katherine Roger

Past Projects

• Dietary and Spatial Niche Partitioning in Hawaiian Kleptoparasitic Spiders Honors thesis Monica Sheffer

• Molecular Gut Content of Sulawesi Fanged Frogs Led by Ph.D. Candidate Jeff Frederick