About

My research is grounded in natural history and combines ecology and evolution to ask how plants interact with and adapt to their environment. I am especially excited about how plant-insect interactions like pollination and herbivory shape plant trait evolution. I use a range of approaches in my research, from field observational studies at the continent scale, to common-garden plant metabolomics and lab experiments with caterpillars.
I am currently an ISTplus postdoctoral fellow in Nick Barton's group at IST Austria, a research institute outside Vienna. I'm studying natural selection on floral traits in a hybrid zone of two subspecies of wild snapdragons.
For my PhD research, I worked on latitudinal patterns in plant-insect interactions (herbivory and pollination). I completed my PhD in 2018, co-advised by Doug Schemske and Marjorie Weber at Michigan State University. I was in the Plant Biology Department and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior Program.
Contact
I am currently an ISTplus postdoctoral fellow in Nick Barton's group at IST Austria, a research institute outside Vienna. I'm studying natural selection on floral traits in a hybrid zone of two subspecies of wild snapdragons.
For my PhD research, I worked on latitudinal patterns in plant-insect interactions (herbivory and pollination). I completed my PhD in 2018, co-advised by Doug Schemske and Marjorie Weber at Michigan State University. I was in the Plant Biology Department and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior Program.
Contact
Top photo by Pedro Fayolle, right photo by Susanne Yule
Website last updated: Jan 14, 2019
Website last updated: Jan 14, 2019
A palatability experiment: Spodoptera exigua caterpillars feeding on leaves of Phytolacca americana from a common garden of plants collected along a latitudinal gradient. Photos by Carina Baskett.