Academic focus: Evolutionary ecology
Research summary: Our research group seeks to understand the interplay between evolutionary processes and ecological patterns. We mainly work with plants and insects but dabble in microbes, too. Our interests are broad, but lately we’ve been especially interested in the forces impeding or facilitating adaptation to environmental change. We make use of manipulative field experiments, long-term observational data, controlled laboratory experiments and theoretical models to gain understanding of the limits to adaptation and species’ distributions.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I spend most of my free time playing with my two kids, growing plants and attempting a range of DIY projects that I’m pretty good at almost finishing.
What are your current outreach/extension projects?
The past few years have been quiet on the outreach front for me (read: kids under 5), but historically I’ve been heavily involved in developing science outreach programs, especially for K-12. I would love to talk to folks about doing more of this in Tompkins County.
What do you think is important for people to understand about your field?
This is admittedly a bit grandiose, but I don’t think I can put it more pithily than John Muir: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
Why did you feel inspired to pursue a career in this field?
The first time I went on a hike with a real naturalist was in college. I thought I “knew” the woods of North Carolina; I had been roaming them for 15 years. But seeing the forest with an ecologist’s eyes — the tangled web of interacting species, the havoc wreaked by invasive insects, the general principles of biogeography revealed as we hiked up in altitude — was transformative. I am incredibly lucky that studying, conserving and sharing this beautiful, diverse complexity is now my full-time job.
What advice do you have for students interested in your field of study?
Go on lots of meandering hikes (with binoculars and a hand lens); read the old literature; don’t undervalue simple questions. And take a good biological statistics class :-)
Learn more about John from his website.
