ABOUT ME

Growing up in north Georgia, I was surrounded by one of the most biodiverse regions of the United States, and I was blessed with a fascination for animals from an early age. But it wasn't until my first life sciences class in middle school when we talked about Darwin's Origin of Species that I began looking at the world around me in a new light. If we all share a common ancestor, how did we get where we are today? What creates and destroys the millions of new species we see on Earth?

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Luckily, I've had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life since I was in high school, so I got involved in research right away when I began my undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia. While there, I got to double major in ecology and marine science, and conducted research in estuarine ecology under Dr. Jeb Byers.

This work led me to apply to graduate school at Kansas State University under Dr. Michi Tobler. So far in my PhD, I've worked to understand how organisms adapt to survive in extreme environments, and how new species form in the process. Two of my main projects have focused on the stoichiometric and transcriptional changes associated with heavy metal tolerance in mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) and the evolution of reproductive isolation between populations of Atlantic mollies (Poecilia mexicana).