What?
Dissertation
At the most basic level, my dissertation work focuses on creating a framework to rapidly assess the persistence in the soil as a response to environmental factors, particularly temperature and moisture, and to use the results to inform plant population models.
Through a combination of burial experiments and rapid-aging of seeds, I am attempting to characterize changes in the viability and germinability of seeds for multiple species. I am searching for patterns in these "persistence-exposure" models both from a phylogenetic context and by looking at a series of seed traits (including shape, size, and seed-coat permeability).
Biodiversity Analysis of Roadkill in Florida
I am working on a collaborative project analyzing 20 years of roadkill data from Florida State Parks and other management areas. One portion of this project is focused on assessing biodiversity patterns, represented by road kill, in response to traffic, climate, land use, and other abiotic factors. A second portion of the project seeks to understand the patterns of road kill from the lens of phylogenetic relationships and functional traits. We are seeking to understand conditions that might make certain groups of animals more susceptible to being killed by traffic.
Cattle Ranch Wetlands
We are collaborating with researchers at Mac Arthur Agroecology Research Center to study how plant community composition has changed in depression wetlands subjected to different management treatments, including changes in grazing and burning regimes. We are interested to see if there is a phylogenetic signal behind observed changes or if certain functional traits are being selected.