I use interdisciplinary approaches to answer questions about animals’ ecology, especially – but not exclusively – in the context of global climate change and adaptation to extreme and changing conditions. My work aims to integrate information from all levels of biological organization, from the molecular and physiological level, up to phenotypic outcomes for individuals, and how those outcomes shape population dynamics. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, I am studying how survival and fecundity constraints vary with elevation in a montane grasshopper system, along a transect in the Rocky Mountains.

My PhD work at the University of Greifswald in Germany integrated genomics, metabolomics, physiology and microbiology to investigate the success of the European wasp spider, Argiope bruennichi, in rapidly colonizing new habitats in northern Europe. I got my start in science as an undergraduate researcher in the UC Berkeley EvoLab, where I made use of next generation sequencing paired with field observations to describe and quantify the dynamics of dietary and spatial niche partitioning in three web-sharing Hawaiian spider genera: Orsonwelles, Argyrodes, and Ariamnes. I continue to collaborate with the Berkeley EvoLab on a project within the California Conservation Genomics Project, where we are studying landscape genetics and adaptation to the environment in two spider species, Tetragnatha versicolor and T. laboriosa.

Photo by Kathleen Sheffer Photography