Recent News
Hot off the presses is “Highly variable basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) diving behavior in the lower Bay of Fundy, Canada” in Frontiers in Marine Science. This is the culmination of my MS at UNCW and continued after by Drs. Koopman and Westgate. Years later we teamed back up to update my thesis analysis with way more tagged basking sharks (42 in total). We took the opportunity to use some statistical advancements to classify basking shark vertical movements (colloquially dives) and characterize their overall movement strategy across the dynamic Bay of Fundy summer. The publication is open access so give it a read!
About Me
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I am a quantitative ecologist studying patterns across the ecological hierarchy in search of the processes that link individuals to populations, populations to communities, and communities to ecosystems. I specialize in integrating analytical methods into synthetic models aimed at providing robust inference and filling data gaps. I have applied these integrated models in a broad set of interdisciplinary problems ranging from building risk maps for conservation and natural resource priority species to estimating life history characteristics of data-deficient species. Above all, I enjoy solving puzzles across the natural sciences. With a background in biology and chemistry, it is no wonder that my other interests feature these subjects prominently. I am an avid gardener with a collection of Zingiberales and orchids. I take much of my gardening inspiration by exploring the natural world and especially enjoy hunting for rare plants in situ. I try my hand at photography both in the garden and out exploring so the photos featured here are my own. |
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My BackgroundI grew up exploring the Southwestern United States and Eastern North America. I received a B.S. in Biology and B.A in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. I stayed there for my M.S. studying the spatial and movement ecology of Basking Sharks in the Bay of Fundy. I finished my PhD at the University of Florida in 2017 studying the role of habitat in structuring aquatic vertebrate interactions. I stayed on as a postdoctoral researcher from 2018-2020 specializing in advanced species distribution modeling. I continued on as an assistant research scientist working on an ecosystem-based fisheries management initiative in collaboration with NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.
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