I am a postdoc in Ellen Damschen’s lab at Washington University, St. Louis. My research focuses on how local and regional processes interact to determine community diversity in the face of anthropogenic environmental changes. This general research interest has led me to work with plants, mycorrizal fungi, and birds to address questions at local, landscape, and continental spatial scales. My goal is to link ecological theory with empirical research in ways that will inform conservation and restoration efforts.

I am currently working at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which is one of three sites comprising a large-scale restoration project funded by the Strategic Environmental Research Program (SERDP). We are investigating how land-use history, biotic interactions, and abiotic factors interact to constrain restoration success in longleaf pine forest understories. Within the context of this research, I am particularly interested in the effect of land-use history on functional and phylogenetic plant diversity prior to restoration and during the community assembly process.

Other ongoing research interests include the spatial patterns of species abundances, particularly for species of conservation concern (declining species and invasive species). This work stems from my dissertation at the University of Kansas, where I studied the influence of habitat fragmentation on patterns of species’ declines using a new analytical tool: Rank Occupancy-Abundance Profiles (ROAPs).  I am continuing to use ROAPs to examine spatial and temporal dynamics of declines in North American breeding birds, and to explore how connectivity and species’ traits influence shifts in occupancy and abundance in fragmented landscapes.