For the past two years, I have been an undergraduate researcher for Assistant Professor Marta Jarzyna. The Jarzyna lab aims to understand the mechanisms for biodiversity patterns and evidence for biodiversity change across spatial and temporal scales. I’m very interested in elevation and latitudinal gradients as well as community ecology so, when I found out that Jarzyna works on these topics, I was very eager to join her lab.
In early 2020, I began working with one of Jarzyna’s former postdocs, Brooks Kohli, on a project about small mammal diversity on mountains around the world. Starting this project was really exciting for me because I have always been fascinated with how biodiversity changes with elevation. Mountains have an incredible amount of biodiversity and have been important for testing various ecological hypotheses. Our study provided a comprehensive evaluation of elevational gradients in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of rodents. We were specifically interested in how latitude and aridity affect patterns of functional and phylogenetic diversity.
Since fall of 2020, I have been working on an REU-funded project with another one of Jarzyna’s postdocs, Stephen Murphy. This project involves examining the role of seasonal variation on trait composition of bird communities across the globe. One of our objectives is to investigate how trait-environment relationships are influenced by scale across space and time. A major component of this project was generating a database for the birds of the world that incorporates seasonality. We have finished collecting this data and are now starting our analysis.
