We are biodiversity scientists and our research focuses on what causes spatiotemporal changes in genetic and species diversity. We take an integrative approach to global change biology and the skills in lab range from occupancy modeling to spatial ecological modeling, to landscape genetics, to molecular phylogenetics. The diversity in lab is also its strength -- we continue to discover that the interesting questions are the integrative ones that require multiple lines of evidence.
Because so much of the work in lab uses primary species and population occurrence data (when and where species and populations occur) available from natural history collections, we are very involved in ecological and biodiversity informatics initiatives to increase the quality, availability and utility of such datasets at the global scale. Our particular informatics interes is building web-based tools so that anyone may access, visualize and analyze legacy and current biodiversity distribution and environmental data. I primarily work on gastropod molluscs but students work on a variety of organisms including mammals, snakes, insects and viruses. Our work, both at the level of landscape and taxon, often has applied utility in the area of conservation biology.
