I am currently a postdoctoral fellow through the Living Earth Collaborative in St. Louis and am starting my lab at University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP!) this summer (2022).

I have always been interested in the role of vision guiding behavior and communities - probably because as a little boy my mother always pointed out that I was color blind. I started to get serious about understanding vision as an undergraduate at Alma College, which led to research into the importance of defensive coloration for spiders and turtles. This introduced the notion that light is, if not everything, one of the most important factors for life. So I pursued graduate studies at Arizona State University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to study the effects of different light environments on butterfly coloration, vision, and behavior. I spent years traveling in different biomes measuring light and its impacts on biology and observed that so many light environments are changing due to human disturbance. For instance, light pollution completely alters and degrades the natural night sky, and deforestation and the built environment have altered the composition of light environments during the day. This was (and still is) very alarming to me, so I shifted from basic biology to become more inclusive of conservation biology.

So for my first appointment out of grad school, I was a night sky fellow for the National Park Service out of Colorado State University. Here, I studied the effects of light pollution on organisms (mostly moths and montane communities) as well as studying the physical properties of light and how to measure light in more biologically relevant ways. During this postdoc fellowship, I became very interested in how organisms have evolved activity patterns and respective traits based on time and lighting, this led to my current postdoctoral fellowship with the Living Earth Collaborative where I am studying how light environments drive the temporal and visual niches of arthropod communities.

On a professional note, the journey thus far has also included many teaching, mentoring, and service components. So although I am dedicated to understanding the importance of light in behavioral and conservation ecology, I also am dedicated to preparing the future generation of scientists as well as a scientific literate society. As I begin my role as an assistant professor at UTEP, I will be focused on continuing my research efforts, mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students, building upon the immense entomology and arachnology collections at UTEP, teaching courses in animal behavior, behavioral and sensory ecology, as well as entomology. Oh, and I plan on writing a lot of grant proposals… this research will not fund itself!

On a personal note, when I am not working to preserve the natural light environments that are so important for life on Earth, I enjoy getting out into the backcountry with my partner Beth and our dog, Chi (pronounced like the statistical test of inference…). I also enjoy cooking, tennis, and exploring what life has to offer… for example microbreweries.