People

I am an evolutionary ecologist that is broadly interested in understanding how ecological processes shape the evolutionary trajectories of plant populations. The majority of my research strives to understand the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that determine how and where plants persist in spatially and temporally variable environments.

I research how the interaction between genetic and environmental variation shapes species' ecological niche breadth. I aim to determine whether species-level breadth is composed of differently specialized, or broadly tolerant, populations in monkeyflower species. In addition, I am studying the demography of hybridizing cinquefoil taxa to understand drivers of niche breadth and range dynamics in changing environments.

I study plant adaptation to environmental conditions that are highly variable and often unpredictable. I use statistical modeling to predict which adaptive strategies should be favored in response to patterns of water availability in the alpine, and field experiments to empirically test these predictions in the field.

My research focuses on interactions between seed dispersal evolution and environmental adaptation in plants. I use simulation modeling techniques to study evolutionary feedback loops between seed dispersal evolution and environmental adaptation in changing environments, and empirical techniques to study the influence of environmental factors on traits that control seed dispersal in California goldfields.

My research broadly investigates the ecological and evolutionary processes that sets range limits of plants in heterogenous landscapes. I am particularly interested in incorporating range-wide population dynamics into predictions of range shifts with a changing climate. My work with the Emery lab focuses on the eco-evolutionary feedbacks between dispersal dynamics and habitat specialization in a vernal pool system.

My research focuses on the roles that gene flow and local adaptation play in facilitating and/or constraining population persistence in the face of global change. I use a combination of climate manipulation, greenhouse common garden experiments, and genetically explicit in situ transplant experiments to investigate population-level responses of a native mountain wildflower, Rock Jasmine, to local changes in temperature, moisture, and snowpack dynamics.