My research interests fall into two broad categories:

1: what is where and why? how do species interactions persist across evolutionary timescales?
2. bugs is shapes.

my research, like my art, is guided by (as Wayne Maddison so beautifully put it) “a gratuitous focus on the beauty of the organism”.

I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona, where I am pursuing a graduate major in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology working with Judie Bronstein, and a graduate minor in Entomology and Insect Sciences.

M.S. work on yucca glauca spp. in the Chihuahuan Desert

I completed my Masters of Science in the Department of Computational and Integrative Biology at Rutgers-Camden, working with Dr. Amy Savage. Before I began the program, Amy invited me to join a small NSF RCN (research collaborative network) focused on urban ecology&evolution. This meeting was housed at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in Socorro New Mexico, and I had barely stepped off the plane when I knew that I needed to both work and live in a desert.

Luckily, in my first year I was able to work in the Sevilleta (and Albuquerque) for 3 months, analyzing the ant community composition present on the Yucca glauca species complex along an urbanization gradient. This work, which included a large component of ant tending research, helped me fall in love with mutualisms, and eventually led me to Judie’s lab!

Everywhere! Everything!

I am lucky enough to be in a fantastic lab at a university with resources I can only begin to dip my toes into in 5 years. I’m excited to explore some of my big conceptual questions, and will hopefully be updating this page with all sorts of manuscripts and fieldwork pictures after my first year is up.

I am largely interested in species interactions and within that have developed a fascination for commensalism and mutualism. What determines context dependence for a mutualism? How do specialists and generalists interact across and within trophic networks?

Topics of interest to me include mutualism from a community perspective and context dependency, the evolution of ant inquilines, ant-auchenorrhyncha (leafhopper/treehopper/planthopper) interactions, and the community turnover of seasonal insect+plant communities.

Bugs is shapes: they are made of shapes! They fill shapes in the ecosystem! They connect like intricate little jigsaw pieces in their niches and within their physiology! Why? Why are some leafhoppers semi-aquatic? What shapes make insects good mutualists? How do those shapes evolve? How are their shapes changing?

I want to study pretty much any and everything to do with insects and how they interact. Anything that happens in the Sonoran desert.

Cultural Entomology and Science Communication are both topics that involve passion projects for me, and I love to engage with both! I love to write, am an obnoxious presence on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and pretty much any place I can be irritating about insects. Reach out to collaborate, to talk about insects/art/knitting, or just to say hi.

Current Directions