Research Interests

I am broadly interested in arthropod evolution and how we can examine other axes of biology (ecology, behavior, physiology) in this context. For my PhD, I am examining the population genetics and taxonomy of a genus of scorpion found in California, and responses of arthropods to wildfire and grazing. These responses are poorly documented in the literature and are two potential threats to the conservation of arthropods in California.

I graduated with my B.S. in Entomology from Cornell in 2020, and my M.S. in Biology with a concentration in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from San Francisco State University in 2022. At Cornell, I studied the evolution of the huntsman spiders (Sparassidae) in the context of behavior and life history for my honor’s thesis, and described the first Central American species of the moth genus Argyresthia in a separate project. During my master’s, I focused on the evolution of the diverse marronoid clade and sought to resolve the family-level relationships.

Current Projects