Mechanistic models of species' ranges in changing environments
Energetic and ecological constraints on abundance and diversity

Biogeography | Population and community ecology | Physiological Ecology
Theory | Field work | Ecoinformatics


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I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. I am also a Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher at the Santa Fe Institute and a visiting scholar in the Jetz Lab at UC San Diego. In the course of earning a Ph.D. at Stanford University, I studied the biogeography and community ecology of Caribbean Lizards in the Roughgarden Lab.



Research Interests

My research combines theory, field work, and ecoinformatics to examine how energy use and availability govern the density, distributions, and diversity of reptiles and amphibians across spatial scales. One focus is developing mechanistic models of species distributions that scale from individual foraging energetics to population and community dynamics. The models enable more robust predictions of species distributions in unsampled regions and in response to environmental change. Recent research applies the models to predict current ranges for North American lizards and those following climate change. Ongoing research aims to extend the models across taxonomy and geography and to consider the range implications of adaptation and geographic variation in life history. Additional research addresses energetic and ecological constraints on global patterns of lizard density, of amphibian richness, and of species turnover.