Postdoctoral Fellow
Climate Change Institute, University of Maine
Orono, Maine
I am a community ecologist, primarily focused on plant-insect interactions within fossil and modern ecosystem. Plant fossils and preserved insect herbivory providing a deep-time understanding of how past climate change has influenced these relationships across a variety of forest types. Within this record, the earth experienced higher atmospheric CO2 and temperatures but at a much slower rate than anthropogenic change. In order to compare fossil to modern datasets, I live in the grey area between modern and paleoecology. My postdoctoral research focuses on using both modern and fossil information to understand why fern communities were successful following the K-Pg (Cretaceous-Paleogene) extinction event. Focusing on ground-up processes is incredibly important for understanding the impacts of modern climate change on terrestrial biospheres as plants lay the foundation for environmental stability.
(PL-3-1) Fern facilitation following biotic upheaval, possibilities for terraforming
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
9:03 AM – 9:30 AM EDT