4/2025
Marie Evans, a UALR Senior working in my lab, won a merit award at UALR's 2025 Research and Creative Works Expo for her poster entitled, "Innate Immunity Between Brown Anole Populations Along a Latitudinal Gradient"! She has put in a ton of hard work, and I'm so proud of what she has been able to accomplish.
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1/2025
I'm excited to welcome Carrie Alfonso to the lab! She's the first graduate student to join, and she is interested in studying immune function and host-parasite dynamics of diamond-backed watersnakes here in central Arkansas.
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10/2024
I've been really behind on updating the website, and in that time a ton has happened. I accepted and began an Assistant Professor position at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in January of this year. I'm finally starting to get settled into my new role, and I am incredibly excited for the things to come. I've started working with some great undergraduate students here, I'll be looking to take on a few graduate students in the next couple semesters (please reach out by email). Finally, I've had several cool papers come out from various projects (check those out on the publications tab), and I'm hard at work on getting new projects set up and maintaining projects that I started during my postdoc in Florida.
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10/2023
The third chapter of my dissertation, "Compensation for exposure to increased environmental temperatures is costly in a montane, desert lizard", has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Arid Environments! We looked at the effects of increased temperatures on a suite of behavioral and physiological traits in free-ranging greater short-horned lizards (Phrynosoma hernandesi) in Southeast Utah. This was a super fun, collaborative project aimed at disentangling the effects of climate change in a natural setting.
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5/2023
The first paper of my postdoc, "Bite or flight? Behavioral interactions between bark anoles and brown anoles in their nonnative range", was just accepted for publication in Journal of Zoology! This is a cool paper I wrote up from a study designed and implemented by a Florida International University Herpetology class. A lot of really bright undergraduate students were able to contribute to our understanding of interactions between invasive species in South Florida.
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7/2022
The first chapter of my dissertation has been accepted for publication in Journal of Thermal Biology! Be on the look out for my paper, "Temporal climatic variability predicts thermal tolerance in two sympatric lizard species".
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3/2022
I've accepted a position with Dr. Christian Cox at Florida International University. I'll be starting as a postdoctoral associate at the beginning of April, and I'll be moving to Florida in June!
11/2021
I successfully defended my dissertation!!
10/2021
My paper, "Thermal Biology Does Not Vary with Body Size in Greater Short-horned Lizards (Phrynosoma hernandesi)" was recently published in Herpetological Review.
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5/2020
I received a departmental research grant to continue my work modeling lizard body temperature using light-level data.
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5/2020
We're doing a bunch of work in the Battle Creek, MI area on basking behavior and nest site selection in map turtles on the Kalamazoo River.
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10/2020
Our paper, "Cellular and whole-organism effects of prolonged versus acute heat stress in a montane, desert lizard" was accepted for publication in Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A.
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4/2020
I was awarded a fellowship by the Canyonlands Research Center to continue my dissertation at their facility this summer.
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1/2020
I just returned from SICB 2020 in Austin, TX where I presented a poster on the thermal ecology of lizards across an elevational gradient, and a talk over the snake trophic morphology work that was recently accepted in Integrative Zoology. I was also briefly profiled in this year's Sundial Newsletter for the Canyonlands Research Center. You can check out that write-up here.
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12/2019
I just got word that a manuscript I wrote up from my MS work has been accepted for publication in the journal Integrative Zoology! Keep an eye out for it in 2020!
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8/2019
My abstracts for some MS work and PhD work were accepted for SICB 2020. Looking forward to talking about some science again soon!
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8/2019
I'm getting ready to head down to the ESA conference in Louisville, KY!
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7/2019
We just got back from a six week stay in Utah. Tons of data to sift through!
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6/2019
Our paper, "Developmental plasticity of thermal ecology traits in reptiles: Trends, potential benefits, and research needs", was accepted for publication in Journal of Thermal Biology.
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4/2019
Two of our UT undergraduates were awarded Undergraduate Research Grants to come work with me in Utah this summer.
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1/2019
I was awarded a research grant from the Horned Lizard Conservation Society for my work in Utah.
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