I am a PhD student in the Holzapfel lab studying the community ecology of migratory birds which stopover in urban areas. I’m particularly interested in what ecological and anthropogenic factors drive patterns of assembly among migratory bird communities at urban stopover sites as well as the movement and behavior of these birds while they stopover and how that relates to the structure of these urban forest patches.
I graduated from Wittenberg University with a B.S. in Biology, and I previously have done research projects on the spatial and movement ecology of migratory marine fish species at both the University of Texas Marine Science Institute and the Duke University Marine Lab. After graduating college, I spent three years teaching high school English in rural Japan and two years as a teacher naturalist in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee! I’m a scientist at heart, but I’m a big proponent of the intersection of art, science, and community! You can catch me in my spare time making pen-and-ink drawings of animals I find cool, making glitchy music on my computer, watching anime, playing with my dog, or out in my local greenspaces using iNaturalist or eBird to document my observations of wildlife!