People
Entomologist
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Andy Hicks
…has a love of insect life that began as a child in Texas and
Maryland and has led to experience in museum collections, research and
field work with organizations including the Systematic Entomological
Laboratory and Agricultural Research Service of the USDA, the
Smithsonian Institution, the University of Colorado’s Natural History
Museum, and the Colorado Natural Heritage Program as well as numerous
publications regarding insect systematics, biogeography & host plant
associations.
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Graduate Students
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Jeff McClenahan
Jeff is interested in community ecology and the mechanisms that
influence species assembly within communities. Jeff is studying insect
species within the Wog Wog experiment and using simulation models to
determine how environmental variables and species interactions determine
species’ distributions. He hopes that knowledge gained will help to
establish successful conservation strategies.
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Kika Tarsi
Kika's research focuses on the maintenance of biodiversity in
disturbed landscapes, particularly the ways in which fragmented
populations maintain genetic and demographic health over time.
Currently, Kika is studying skink populations within the Wog Wog
experiment, combining long-term field data with molecular and modeling
techniques to understand changes in metapopulation dynamics since
fragmentation in 1987. Her research interests integrate landscape
genetics, conservation biology, and population ecology with the hopes of
developing effective conservation strategies for long-term population
persistence.
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John Evans
For his PhD project, John is studying the ability of beetle species
to disperse through fragmented landscapes. He will use a variety of
techniques including genetics and tracking, to test directly the
dispersal ability of a number of beetle species at the Wog Wog
experimental site, each with known responses to fragmentation over the
experiment's 25 year history. John is based at the Australian National
University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia and is jointly supervised by Dr
Davies and Drs Don Driscoll and Sam Banks from the ANU.
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Undergraduates
Robert Wilson is working
hard sorting our Wog Wog invertebrate samples. Robert is also working on an honors project
looking at the response of a scorpion and amphipod species to habitat
fragmentation, 23 years post fragmentation.
Matthew McAllister traveled
to Australia in May to shoot footage for a documentary on the Wog Wog
experiment.
Prospective PhD Students
The lab is currently full.
Prospective Postdocs
We are currently interviewing potential postdocs to work on the soil
microbial community at Wog Wog.
I encourage individuals who have their own funding, or are interested in pursuing funding, to email me to discuss research ideas. Potential funding sources are: Smith Fellows Program.
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