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.

Undergraduates

Two undergraduates from the lab, Christina Rasanen and Greg Zervos, recently spent time in Australia helping to set up our habitat fragmentation experiment. Currently, we are seeking undergraduates with a strong interest in entomology.

Below is the group that reinstalled nearly 400 pitfall traps in August 2009 (from left: Christina Rasanen, Ty Tuff, Katherine McClure, Greg Zervos, Brett and Lara Melbourne, Eric Melbourne.

Prospective PhD Students

I am interested in working with creative and motivated students who have research experience in ecology. Students will develop an independent research program related to my research. I work on empirical spatial questions in community ecology, with a focus on extinction and invasion (see Research page). I am currently recruiting students to work within the Wog Wog habitat fragmentation experiment. I am particularly interested in students with good statistical or modeling skills or a strong desire to develop quantitative skills. Please contact me with a description of your research interests, your CV, GRE scores expressed as percentages and your GPA.

In the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology graduate program, students are admitted by a graduate committee and students are not accepted without financial support. Accepted students are promised academic year support via Teaching Assistantships. I will provide support where possible and also expect students to apply for outside funding (NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, EPA STAR Fellowship).

Prospective Postdocs

Funded Postdoc positions in the lab will be advertised. 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: NSF Biological Informatics Postdoctoral Fellowship, Smith Fellows Program.