Goals and Future Work

My ultimate goal at this point is to be the principal investigator in a team of researchers at a government agency or non-governmental organization, coordinating field and laboratory research that has direct implications for management and conservation. As the next step in reaching that goal, I am currently in graduate school, working on a PhD in Ecology.

For my PhD research, I am interested in when, why, and how genetic diversity declines towards the edge of species’ geographic ranges. Most species have lower genetic diversity at the edge of their range, but perhaps more interesting is that some species do not. Even within one species’ range, diversity may be reduced at some range edges but not others. I plan to study these exceptions to the rule in an attempt to determine why diversity is sometimes lower, and sometimes not, at the edge of a species’ range. I am asking these questions empirically in the Northern Leopard Frog, a species found throughout much of northern North America that exhibits a variety of types of range edges. It is my hope that gaining a better understanding of the causes of reduced diversity at range edges will improve our ability to manage peripheral populations and to predict responses of species’ distributions to climate change.

You can track my progress in collecting samples for this research on my blog at 200birds.blogspot.com.

Updated 6 April 2009