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About meI am originally from Salina, Kansas. In 2012, I graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a BS in Environmental Science and began graduate school at UNC that same year. Broadly, I consider myself an evolutionary ecologist. I am interested in researching the effects of global change on plant-insect interactions, specifically micro-evolution of the invasive Lepidopteran pest species Pieris rapae.
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How do nutrition and temperature influence adaptation of an invasive insect?
The bulk of my dissertation research has focused on studying how abiotic factors such as temperature and host plant nutrition influence micro evolution and local adaptation of an invasive butterfly Pieris rapae otherwise known as the cabbage white. This butterfly is invasive to North America and arrived with immigrants in the 1860s around New York, NY. I have compared a high latitude population from Nova Scotia, CA and a low latitude population from North Carolina, USA to compare how larval life history traits respond to different combinations of developmental temperatures and diet treatments including fertilized collard greens and artificial diets varying in protein and carbohydrate content. This research will help us understand how fertilization practices in agriculture influence development of larvae and has the potential to inform pest outbreak models and predictions under climate change.
How do invasive host plants affect native insect herbivores?
The first five weeks of spring during my first 3 years of my graduate work were spent doing field research collecting and studying the native butterfly Pieris virginiensis aka the West Virginia white interactions with the invasive garlic mustard plant (Alliaria petiolata). Pieris virginienis is a relatively rare, butterfly that utilizes the native spring ephemeral Dentaria diphylla but mistakenly uses the poisonous garlic mustard when it is present in the environment as it is chemically similar to the native host plant species. I compared adult female interactions with the native and invasive host plants between populations where garlic mustard is absent in North Carolina to populations where it is present and abundant in West Virginia to determine if these populations were adapting to or avoiding the poisonous garlic mustard. If you're interested you can, view the publication here.
