Research
My research focuses on understanding the distribution of biodiversity across spatial scales, motivated by a blend of intellectual interest in ecological theory, an underlying goal of empirically guided conservation, and a drive to learn new quantitative techniques. In particular, I often use hierarchical Bayesian models (in JAGS and Stan) and mechanistic simulations, in addition to univariate and multivariate frequentist techniques.
My research at the University of Lausanne centers on ants and is a part of Opération Fourmis, a citizen science project hosted by the University of Lausanne, the Lausanne Museum of Natural History, and the Vaudoise Naturalist Society in honor of Auguste Forel (1848–1931), a myrmecologist from the region. Citizen scientists collected thousands of ants from the region while I led a concurrent scientifically structured sample. I’m using these data to assess the patterns of species diversity across spatial scales, and to test hypotheses about the environmental factors that shape species’ traits.
My postdoctoral research at the University of New Hampshire focused on glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus), a shrub native to Eurasia and invasive in the northeastern United States with particular associations with Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus). The landscape is predominately privately owned, making management decisions decentralized and complicated. The project aims to evaluate different management strategies and economic incentive structures by integrating a mechanistic model of glossy buckthorn population dynamics, the biological impacts of different management approaches, and economic decision models based on game theory. In a separate project, I am evaluating the impact of uncertainty and common data deficiencies on correlative and mechanistic species distribution models.
My dissertation research evaluated biodiversity theory across spatial scales, capitalizing on modern tools and the accumulation of data across decades. Using datasets from the literature, I established the dominant patterns of ant richness across elevations and assessed predictions from prominent hypothesized environmental drivers at a global scale. With extensive fieldwork in Colorado, I investigated ant communities along elevational gradients in the southern Rocky Mountains, seeking to understand the processes driving the patterns and changes at different spatial scales. For example, I constructed a multi-scale community-level hierarchical Bayesian occupancy model to evaluate the support for hypothesized diversity drivers at local and regional scales, accounting for uncertainty in species detections and for the details of the sampling design. I also used historical datasets from the region to test for changes in species’ elevational ranges, expecting shifts due to a changes in climate and in land use, both of which are dependent on the elevation. In a separate project, I also used stochastic simulations of population dynamics to evaluate our ability to detect species’ responses to climate change.