NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology Award
Coming Summer 2022-2024

Integrating phenology and species interactions into future predictions of spring ephemeral distributions​

I was awarded an NSF PRFB! My project is entitled "Integrating phenology and species interactions into future predictions of spring ephemeral distributions." I will be working with Dr. Katie Stuble at the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, OH, starting in the summer of 2022. We will be using living collections of spring ephemeral plants across a network of arboreta and botanical gardens spanning a large environmental gradient to answer questions about phenological plasticity of intrinsic plant traits (flowering, fruiting, senescence) and extrinsic plant-animal interactions (pollination, dispersal, herbivory). We will use a team of citizen scientists to collect observational data across the de facto "common garden," and will then integrate these data into Trait-based species distribution models to better incorporate species interactions, phenology, plasticity, and local adaptation into predictions of future plant distributions under climate change. 

current Postdoctoral research 
​(2020 - 2022)

I started as a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Kamal Gandhi's Forest Entomology Lab at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia, Athens in September, 2020. My work focuses on the impacts of severe wind disturbances on populations of subcortical insects (Cerambycids and Buprestids) in southern GA and northern FL pine forests. See "Research" for more details!

Graduation!

I graduated with my Ph.D in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and my M.S. in Statistics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville on May 7, 2020!
Featured research: 
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New publication out in Diversity and Distributions: Reproductive traits explain occupancy of predicted distributions in a genus of eastern North American understory herbs.

My coauthors and I determined whether reproductive traits relating to biotic and dispersal factors explain differences between estimated potential and occupied geographic distributions for 21 species of Trillium. We estimated fundamental niches and associated predicted suitable distributions using climate-calibrated ecological niche models and defined occupied distributions as the intersection between known ranges and predicted suitable areas (PSAs). We then calculated proportional occupancy of the predicted suitable distribution (PO) by dividing the area of the occupied distribution by the PSA. Reproductive traits (ovule number, seed set, number of seeds/plant, seed mass, adult biomass, flower type: sessile/pedicellate) were related to PO using beta regression models.
Takeaways:

1. There was considerable variation in PO across species (1.1%–96%, mean = 51%). The majority of species that filled < 60% of their potential range had sessile flowers, whereas the majority of species that filled > 60% of their potential range had pedicellate flowers. (Fig. 2).
2. The best-fit model found significantly lower PO for sessile-flowered species. (Fig. 3). Ovule number and seed mass were also significant predictors of PO.
3. Variation in PO among Trillium species can be explained by flower type, ovule number and seed mass—biotic traits related to dispersal ability.

Variation in dispersal potential stemming from primary and long-distance dispersers is related to the ability to occupy the predicted suitable distribution in Trillium.


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