People


Entomologist

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.



Graduate Students

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.

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.

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.




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.