2023-24 New Faculty

I am an insect ecologist interested in the role of within-species variation in species interactions, especially plant-pollinator mutualisms. I started my career as an undergraduate here at Williams, after which I got my PhD at the University of Arizona studying sex-associated differences in the behavior of hawkmoths in both flower and larval host-plant contexts. As a post-doc, I worked at the University of California Riverside and the University of Oregon, researching the pollination behavior and pathogens infecting wild bees on sunflower farms in the California central valley. Most recently I’ve been an NSF Post-doctoral Fellow at Cornell, using preserved insect specimens from museums to forensically examine how hawkmoths have changed their floral foraging behavior over the last 100 years.
 
I am very excited to be back in the purple valley, and to teach Conservation Bio and an ecology senior seminar this coming year! While I’m here, my research will focus on the consequences of variation in plant-pollinator interactions, investigating variation in floral foraging contexts, the mechanics of pollen transfer, and patterns of local pollen foraging in historical time.