Research Interests

I study how species interactions shape ecosystems, with a particular focus on herbivory and plant communities. How does herbivory affect plant phenotype? How does overgrazing impact ecosystem services? How do positive interactions shape plant communities? To date, these questions have taken me from the salt marshes of New England to the savannas of East Africa. 
The common thread in all of my work is a desire to understand the mechanisms underlying ecological patterns. I use a variety of approaches, including community ecology, demographic, and molecular techniques, to better understand the ecology and natural history of the systems where I work. For more details, click the links above!

News and Recent Activity

August 2017 - Talk on plant defenses accepted for Ecological Society of Australia meeting in November!
July 2017 - Guest blog post on ESA Ecotone about my experience advocating for science in Washington, DC
June/July 2017 - Ninth trip to Mpala Research Centre with Princeton Environmental Institute intern Anna Marsh
April 2017 - Traveled to Washington, DC as an ESA Graduate Student Policy Award winner and to March for Science
April 2017 - Received a Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies Fellowship for work in Kenya
March 2017 - Served as a guest judge for the Hopewell Elementary School Science Fair in Hopewell, NJ
March 2017 - Received the Caroline Thorn Kissel Summer Environmental Studies Scholarship from the Garden Club of America
January 2017 - Eighth trip to Mpala Research Centre to continue work on B. racemosa demography and Acacia liana projects
January 2017 - Published collaborative paper on vegetation spatial patterning and Namibian fairy circles in Nature 
​November 2016 - Published first dissertation chapter on elephant damage and plant responses in Ecology
June 2016 - Published collaborative paper on the diet of African ungulates in PNAS
March 2016 - Received NSF DDIG to fund new epigenetic and demographic components of my dissertation!