I am interested in a variety of research questions addressing how organisms cope with environmental variation. More broadly, I am interested in the evolution of behavior, and bringing the principles of behavioral evolution to bear on studies of conservation biology.

I have a strong commitment to educating young people both in evolutionary principles and conservation biology. My PhD dissertation in the Papaj lab focused on costs of learning in host use, and associated reproductive tradeoffs, in the cabbage butterfly, Pieris rapae.

I defended my dissertation in late August 2007 and, in October 2007, began postdoctoral research on dung beetle phenotypic plasticity in the laboratory of Armin Moczek at Indiana University. I was recently awarded a National Institutes of Health NRSA postdoctoral fellowship to continue this work.