Cities • Environmental Justice • Wildlife
As an urban ecologist, I am keen on advancing our understanding of the relationship between cities, societal inequity, and wildlife. I'm especially interested in investigating how societal inequity and injustice shapes the landscape people and wildlife experience, and what this means for our collective futures. I focus on urban ecosystems because they provide compelling model systems to address how societal features and human-driven disturbances impact organismal biology and community ecology, lending itself to application, management, and conservation policy. My research spans across ecological scales, from what shapes an individual's behavior to investigating the drivers of biodiversity, and thinks holistically about cities to promote positive human-wildlife interactions, evenly monitor urban biodiversity, and improve access to nature.
Urban Wildlife Ecology
Wildlife face unique pressures in cities, including environmental hazards and anthropogenic pressures. I'm interested in how social and ecological factors shape organismal ecology (e.g., behavior, stress) as well as community ecology (e.g., biodiversity) in cities.
Published work:
Published work:
- Environmental contamination predicts mammal diversity and mesocarnivore activity in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area (preprint)
- Historical redlining is associated with disparities in wildlife biodiversity in four California cities (PNAS, 2024).
- Temporary behavioral responses to playbacks by a pest parrot and management implications (Animal Behavior & Cognition, 2022).
Contributory Data
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Cities provide a model ecosystem to understand the impacts of social-ecological dynamics, with the urban systems acting as a dynamic mosaic of pressures that can select for and maintain particular (mal)adaptive traits. I'm interested in understanding how cities/humans influence wildlife behavior, health, and community structure/dynamics.
Projects in prep:
Relevant Work: |
