Additional Information

Here are some links to related people and reasearch that have directly and indirectly influenced my research.

Advisors

Mona Papes

Faculty Advisor

I am interested in the interplay between species' enviornmental and spatial occurance patterns and how such interactions are manifested in species' distributions in the context of current and future climates under increasing anthropogenic influences.

My research covers both theoretical and applied aspects of these questions of distributional biology, including issues such as remote sensing applications to mapping biodiversity, predicting areas at risk of invasive species, conservation of data-deficient species, and seasonal variation of species’ distributions.

Tim O'Connell

Faculty Co-Advisor

Applying the principles of landscape ecology to advance the conservation of native birds.

How do species come to occur where they do in space and time? What features on the landscape allow a species to persist in that landscape? How do human influences over large scales affect a region's "ecological health?" Can we apply what we know to inform land use decisions and work toward restoration? These are the broad questions that guide most of my research; I try to answer them primarily through field studies of breeding songbirds

Colleagues

Fikirte Gebresenbet Erda

I am generally interested in understanding and solving challenges in wildlife conservation through: community based wildlife conservation, applied conservation and management of wildlife and environmental education. My research focuses on priority setting for carnivore conservation in southern Ethiopia through scenario analysis and GIS modeling.

Xiao Feng

I am especially interested in Ecological Niche Models (ENMs), which enable us to investigate the potential distribution of species.

More specifically, I am interested in the following questions:

1. How would species distribution change under climate change?

2. How to evaluate the ENMs prediction?

3. Is niche conservative? Is there any "Niche Shift" during invasion process?

Iulian Gherghel

I am interested in niche conservancy theory, evolution and structure of ecological niches, species spatial and environmental distribution patters. In addition, I am also interested in frequency-dependent selection and its role in speciation and maintaining the phenotypic diversity and understanding the climate role in species niche evolution and divergence. From a more applied point of view, I am interested in the impact of salt used to de-ice the roads on amphibian communities and osmoregulation in amphibian egg clutches; efficiency of protected areas in the context of global changes, with a special emphasis on effects of global warming; the impact of traditional agriculture on amphibian and reptiles species and the impact of the amphibian chytrid fungus (Batrachochytridium dendrobatidis).

Allison Loveless

My research concentrates on population dynamics and evolution of bobcats (Lynx rufus). I am using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Ecological Niche Models (ENM) to understand the influence of dynamic environmental variables on the evolution and maintenance of distinct genetic bobcat lineages across North America. I am also using cranial analyses to identify phenotypic variability among populations in association with environmental variables. Additionally, I am addressing topics of environmental concern such as how changing climate is manifested in the cranial morphology of Lynx rufus

Ranit Pandey

Information coming soon.