Research
My research program uses a 'big data' approach to understand the structure of complex biological communities and predict responses of wildlife to global change and biodiversity loss. Specifically, my work integrates ecological traits, novel remote sensing techniques, and cutting-edge modeling tools to understand wildlife ecology with an eye toward conservation. Broadly, I assess the response of complex large vertebrate communities to biological and anthropogenic drivers, with a strong emphasis on tropical and subtropical systems. Large vertebrates perform important ecological roles and functions globally, and so understanding the processes that structure their communities is critical to environmental and human well-being. In addition, tropical ecosystems are some of the most complex on the planet, given their high biodiversity and biomass. Yet they also experience some of the most significant threats, with large tropical vertebrates being particularly vulnerable to environmental change. My research fills important gaps in ecology and conservation knowledge by providing novel understanding and insight related to complex biological processes in vertebrate communities. Specifically, my approaches investigate 1) how animal communities use space in heterogenous landscapes, 2) how species interactions are altered by human and environmental context, and 3) how vertebrate biodiversity and functional diversity are changing on a global scale.
