Research and Visiting Faculty

My research focuses on the relationship between species and their environment. Species do not exist nor evolve in a vacuum. Thus both the climate and geological landscape in which they exist as well as the other species which they encounter have shaped their past and their present, and will shape their future in our rapidly changing world. I model these dynamics both to study the past (evolutionary processes) and to predict the future (conservation biology). I primarily work on tropical, terrestrial, vertebrates including African amphibians and Galapagos finches. Majors areas of reseach are: landscape genetics/genomics, conservation genetics and evaluations of extinction potential, functional genomics, evolutionary processes, speciation dynamics, hybrid admixure and contact zones.

I teach in the introductory Environmental Science course series (EVST 1012) where we tackle the environmental challenges of our times.