Graduate Research Student
Biologist, ecologist, R analyst
AboutWho am I?
Undergraduate Education
From August 2018 to May 2022, I received my undergraduate education from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. While there, I earned bachelor's degrees in biology with a natural science emphasis, wildlife ecology, and a minor degree in entomology. Relevant courses that helpe expand my knowledge of wildlife ecology include plant diversity, wetlands, principles of entomology, wildlife ecology and management, wildlife of florida, introduction to conservation genetics, economic issues food and you, insect classification, natural resource policy, human dimensions of natural resource management, quantitative wildlife ecology, evolution, avian biology, landscape ecology, introduction to wildlife population ecology, and wildlife techniques. As an undergraduate research assistant, I aided in two research projects. The first research work I participated in was a local project run by Dr. Matthew Hallett. The goal of this project was to monitor and record the various wildlife species using the local portion of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. My duties largely centered around processing camera trap photos from the many trail cameras set up along the corridor as well as deploying and retrieving camera traps. I also worked as an undergraduate assistant in Dr. Christina Romagosa's lab, where I helped process and identify the dietary components of invasive Argentine Black and White Tegus (Salvator merianae) for a graduate research project investigating how these invasive lizards were impacting the southern Florida ecosystem.
Current Education and Research Interests
In August 2022, I began my current work as a graduate student pursuing my master's in biology at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. As a graduate student, I have expanded my understanding of wildlife ecology through courses such as ichthyology, advanced data analytics, wildlife seminar, contemporary issues, and methods of biological research. Broadly, my current research interests include conservation ecology, using spatial ecology to understand how the environment shapes an organism's behavior, population dynamics, community ecology, inter-species interactions, and habitat restoration. Though my current work is on herpetofauna, and that is certainly a major passion, I would gladly work on everything including mammals, birds, invertebrates, and plants. The subject of my ongoing thesis work is the Gila Monster (Heloderma suspectum). These lizards exist over a large portion of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States and regularly come into contact with humans due to urban sprawl and habitat fragmentation. This project will make use of publicly sourced environmental data as well as telemetry data provided by several coauthors from 162 lizards spread around eight study sites in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona to investigate how temporal variation in the environment on an annual scale influences home range size.
Personal Life
I was born and raised in central Florida. My love of nature stemmed from my childhood love of dinosaurs, but after realizing my slim chance of ever getting to see one in real life (excluding birds of course) I turned my attention to more contemporary animals. Exploring the beaches and state parks of the Tampa Bay area, I began to familiarize myself with all of the amazing birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals native to my area, though I quickly grew to love reptiles in particular due to the relative ease with which I could get up close to a gopher tortoise or yellow rat snake compared to the fleeting glimpses of a vanishing bird or fox. That love of nature carried me through countless science fair projects, high school, my undergraduate degrees, and now on to my current position as a master's degree candidate. After earning my master's degree, ideally by spring 2024, I hope to continue my love of wildlife by pursuing a career in the ecology and conservation fields.
Outside of the lab, I somewhat unsurprisingly like getting out and exploring nature. While hiking along forest trails, I enjoy searching for fossils, local herpetofauna and invertebrates, and certain plants of interest to me. At home, I like to cook, exercise, read, garden, and care for my pet turtles and inverts. I've also recently started working as an AVID tutor through the Clarksville Montgomery County School System.