My preferred name is Melissa. I am originally from Bogotá, Colombia. I am a computational ecologist. My main motivation is to use quantitative and computational tools to learn about patterns and processes in biodiversity to inform conservation actions. I was a Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow focusing on estimating changes in pollinator distributions to prioritize areas for conservation. For my work I was awarded the Early Career Award from the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution, the Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Naturalists, and Early Career Fellow from the Ecological Society of America.
Wendy is a K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health Postdoctoral Fellow. She is a quantitative ecologist and uses statistical models to understand species and community dynamics in response to environmental change and determine appropriate conservation actions. Her research focuses specifically on the effects of insecticide regulations on bee communities in the United States and Canada. She collaborates with a network of conservation practitioners, policy groups, and academics to translate research findings into impact. Prior to her research at Cornell, she studied butterfly declines and conservation at Michigan State University and worked as a biometrician at the University of Kentucky.
My preferred name is Jenny. I am working with Dr. Melissa Guzman as a Ph.D. student at Cornell University. I completed my MPhil with Dr. Hongbin Liu at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. I studied how climate change and nutrient input (such as water pollution) affect the phytoplankton abundance in an urbanized estuarine using machine learning algorithms. From there, I discovered my passion for statistical ecology. For my Ph.D. research at Cornell, I focus on applying statistical and computational methods to connect ecological theories to biodiversity data. Particularly, I want to advance our knowledge of how ecosystems connect on multiple spatiotemporal scales and how biodiversity could be affected in a changing climate. My interest includes metacommunity theory, food web ecology, satellite remote sensing technology, and data science.
I am a PhD student in the Entomological Data Science Lab at Cornell University. I am originally from Staunton, Virginia, and received my B.Sc. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Virginia. My research investigates how human development and agricultural expansion impact the organization and persistence of ecological communities, with a focus on the wild bee communities of North America. By examining how a species’ traits (such as phenology and dietary breadth) interact with the spatial and temporal conditions of modified landscapes, my research aims to understand how and why wild bee species respond to anthropogenic pressures differently. Leveraging tools from statistical modeling, population genomics, and field ecology, I ultimately strive to inform effective conservation strategies in the face of rapid global change.
Portia is a PhD student with Dr Melissa Guzman working on the population genomics of California butterflies under climate change and other anthropogenic threats. She obtained her BSc in Ecology and Biodiversity at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), working on the population genetics and trade of Sunda pangolins in Southeast Asia. She then continued her work on pangolin conservation genomics in her MPhil under Prof Tim Bonebrake at HKU, focusing on the population and evolutionary genomics of trafficked Asian pangolins. For her PhD, she is interested in applying population genomics and population modelling tools to explore the “winners” and “losers” under climate change from a genomics perspective. More broadly, she is interested in working at the interface of conservation biology and population genomics to better understand the effects of various anthropogenic threats on the ecology and biodiversity of different systems.
Tobyn is a PhD student in Entomology with Dr Melissa Guzman, broadly interested in studying how the functional traits of insects respond to anthropogenic climate and land use change across landscapes. They completed their BSc in Zoology at the University of Calgary and wrote and illustrated a guide to bumble bee species in the area Bumble Bees of Calgary. They then did their MSc in Biology with a focus on ecology, also at the U of C, working on the landscape and trait ecology of pest predators, specifically carabids, in agroecosystems. They were particularly interested in how agricultural intensity in a landscape shaped carabid traits and found that the had greater trait diversity and were more likely to hunt pests nearer to non-crop areas. After their MSc, Tobyn worked for an ENGO campaigning for the protection of primary ecosystems and environmental justice for Indigenous communities through policy and on-the-ground change. For their PhD, they are interested in how wild and managed fire, especially cultural burning, impacts pollinator traits in landscapes undergoing intensive agricultural change. Broadly, they want to utilize large, messy data across landscapes to understand and potentially predict how anthropogenic change will impact the diversity of plant-pollinator communities and the traits that make up those communities.
Vaughn Shirey now is Assistant Curator of Lepidoptera, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida
Austin Baker now works for BioKEA
Jayme is now Assistant Professor of Entomology at the University of Georgia
Entomological Data Science Lab
Cornell University
129 Garden Ave, Comstock Hall 3142, Ithaca, NY, 14853
