About Me
Growing up exploring Pennsylvania State Game Lands with my dad, our yellow lab blazing the trail, I developed a fascination for the organisms around me. While earning my bachelor’s degree at Penn State University, I dove into my first nature job as a guide for an outdoor orientation program, using backpacking to connect incoming freshmen with each other and the natural world. My love of ornithology sprouted while volunteering at the local bird banding station and led to a summer position as a technician for an avian research project at a remote field camp in Arizona. It was an honor to forgo many showers, chase many fledglings, and process many samples with the fellow nature-enthusiasts of Bird Camp! I am now pursuing my master’s degree while studying the winter ecology of the endearingly fierce Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus), a declining predatory songbird, and possible effects of agricultural practices across the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Wherever my career may take me, I know my true home will always be waiting in the great outdoors.
PhD Dissertation
After receiving my MS in Biology in 2020, I continued on at A-State in Spring 2021 as a PhD student and am currently co-advised by Drs. Than Boves and Lori Neman-Lee. My dissertation broadly focuses on exploring the breeding ecology and potential physiological effects of pesticide exposure in agricultural habitats, using Loggerhead Shrikes as a study species. More specifically, I am testing avian blood samples for the presence of pesticides and evaluating if these agricultural toxins impact the general health (using biological measures and lab assays) or gut microbiome of a resident bird species.
Chapter 1: Breeding ecology of Loggerhead Shrikes in NE Arkansas
Chapter 2: Neonicotinoid prevalence in agricultural and nonagricultural Loggerhead Shrikes
Chapter 3: Sublethal effects of agricultural toxins in a predatory vertabrate
Chapter 4: Comparative analysis of gut microbiome in agricultural and non-agricultural Loggerhead Shrikes
Lab Work
The first comet assays produced from Loggerhead Shrike samples.
