After receiving my bachelors degree from Mount Holyoke College in 2004, I came to Stanford to study developmental biology. I was soon drawn to the interdisciplinary approaches of the Hadly lab, and began a paleogenetic project examining mitochondrial DNA in ancient salamander vertebrae excavated from northern Yellowstone. I now study salamanders from a more modern perspective, and I’ve spent the last three years collecting tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum) and other amphibians from ponds in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Through all of my research, I want to determine how environmental changes through both space and time modify amphibian population genetics, morphology and developmental life history strategy. Local and regional habitat conditions affect Ambystoma morphology, by altering growth, rate of shape change and timing of metamorphosis. I want to determine how these strategies have changed through the late Holocene, and how different ‘ecomorphologies’ are distributed across the heterogeneous wetland environments of northern Yellowstone. In turn, I want to know how these developmental modifications are reflected in the population genetics of the species, and how modern and past responses may predict future challenges to Ambystoma and other amphibians.

I am a fifth-year graduate student broadly interested in the influence of space and time on the evolution and ecology of populations and species.  I received my undergraduate degree in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution from U.C. San Diego in 2000, after which I worked for the Forest Service in Oregon and northern California for 2 years.  I received my Master’s degree from Humboldt State University in 2005, where I worked with Brian Arbogast and investigated the relative utility of mtDNA and AFLP in assessing patterns of genetic variation in an endemic arboreal vole, Arborimus pomo, from northern California. 

My dissertation research at Stanford focuses on how small mammals have responded to environmental change over the past 20,000 years, a time period that encompasses the important Pleistocene-Holocene transition.  I am approaching this issue by assembling population and community level abundance, morphologic, and genetic data from fossil and modern small mammals in the Shasta region of northern California.  My overall goals are to better understand how small mammals responded to past climatic, vegetation, and community change in order to better predict the effects of current and future environmental change on species.

Kim O'Keefe is studying how climate influences ground squirrel distribution, life history and population dynamics in the Yellowstone region. She is investigating how the ecological and evolutionary characteristic of the species affect its response to climate at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Kim received her Masters Degree from San Francisco State University and her B.A. from UC Santa Barbara.

 

Yvonne Chan is interested in using empirical and theoretical approaches to study the influence of environmental change on genetic variation. Yvonne combines studies of modern and ancient DNA, with population genetic simulations to study and measure genetic variation through time (phylochronology). Her goal is to use phylochronology to infer population history in order to study mammalian population response to environmental change. She has two different study systems, Ctenomys sociabilis from Cueva Traful (~8,000 years old), in Argentina, and Microtus montanus, from Lamar Cave (~3500 years old) in Yellowstone National Park. C. sociabilis is an endangered subterranean rodent endemic to the eastern edge of Nahuel Huapi National Park, Argentina. In C. sociabilis she is examining the genetic consequences of long-term historical bottlenecks. She is also exploring the relative impacts of life history traits on mammalian response to environmental change by comparing genetic and morphological changes observed in C. sociabilis and comparing those changes to a more common rodent, C. haigi, over the last 8,000 years. In M. montanus she addresses the importance of adaptation as a response to climatic change by examining whether selection could be responsible for observed genetic changes in M. montanus through time.

Judsen Bruzgul is a doctoral candidate in the ecology and evolution track of the Biological Sciences Department at Stanford University. Judsen's research combines his interests in conservation, biogeography, and macro-ecology. He is investigating patterns of vertebrate species distribution across landscapes and the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on these distributions. Judsen's work is currently focused on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the region of southern Argentina in and around Nahuel Huapi National Park.

Judsen received his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College in Vermont, where he studied biochemistry with an emphasis on environmental chemistry. JudsenÂ’s undergraduate thesis assessed levels of mercury in important game fish from around the state of Vermont. Since then he has studied a wide variety of topics, including arsenic toxicity, production of novel antibiotics, amphibian decline, and fish genetics.

Paula Spaeth began graduate school at Stanford University in 2001, after graduating with an Sc.B. from Brown University in Providence, RI, where she worked with Professor David Rand on her honors thesis. She has begun work in Dr. Elizabeth Hadly’s lab, studying the ecology of modern rodents in an attempt to describe the ecology of their ancient predecessors.

Portions of her thesis will examine the composition of the rodent paleo-community in Yellowstone National Park and the ecological interactions that characterize the modern rodent community in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The questions she hopes to address are: (1) What are the ecological and evolutionary consequences of stable associations of taxa over long (millennial) time-scales? (2) What factors (ecological, climatic, etc.) influence the turnover of taxa within a community on millennial time-scales?

She is studying the population dynamics of several voles species (Microtus spp. and Clethrionomys gapperi) using mark-recapture techniques, and the ecological interactions between these species using removal experiments in the Centennial Valley at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, MT. A recent fire in the Centennial Valley may allow Paula to examine the effects of a habitat mosaic on community composition and quantify rates and sources of vole colonization of disturbed habitat patches.

Paula also is interested in determining what percentage of airborne deermice (Peromyscus spp.) spin their tails like propellers. When she isn’t chasing rodents, Paula enjoys running, pretending that she is in Montana, and eating donuts.

My interests lie broadly in bird and mammal systematics. More specifically, I am studying the evolutionary mechanisms by which modern biodiversity has been formed. These investigations cover both the microevolutionary and macroevolutionary scale, and include merging ancient DNA and paleoecology to infer if and how population parameters such as gene flow and genetic drift have been affected by environmental change in late Holocene birds and rodents. At the macroevolutionary scale, I am currently merging fossil and molecular clock data to infer the tempo and mode of modern birds. Both types of data can inform us tremendously about the importance of past climate changes and extinction and are most useful when used together. I am involved with several studies on how best to calibrate vertebrate, and especially avian, molecular clocks These studies are performed in the context of the Hadly lab work, and on a daily basis I am gaining new insight on the influence of past and present climate on a wide biodiversity scale. These include the structure of populations, haplotypes, communities, families and orders in time and space.

Robert Feranec (2005-2006)
Currently works as the Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the New York State Museum in Albany, New York. His research examines the evolution of ecology in ancient mammals predominately from the Pleistocene epoch. The primary methods he uses to obtain data include analyses of stable isotope geochemistry, morphometrics, and bioinformatics databases. His research has focused in regions including New York, California, Colorado, Florida, Wyoming, and Spain.

 

Christopher J. Conroy (1999-2001)
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
University of California
3101 Valley Life Sciences Building
Berkeley, California  94720-3160  USA
phone: (510) 642-3567
ondatra@berkeley.edu

Ripan Singh Malhi (2001)
Department of Anthropology
Animal Biology
Institute for Genomic Biology
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
185 Davenport Hall
607 Matthews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
ph: (217) 265-0721
malhi@uiuc.edu

Uma Ramakrishnan (2003-2005)
National Centre for Biological Sciences
GKVK Campus, Bellary Road
Bangalore-560065, India
ph: 91-80-23666030
uramakri@ncbs.res.in

Seth D. Newsome (2006)
Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory
5251 Broad Branch Road, NW
Washington, DC 20015
oh: (202) 478-1078
snewsome@ciw.edu

K. Heiman (1999-2000)
A. Novakovic (2000-2001)
D. Ouimette (2001)
J. Stamburger (2001)
T. Steele (1999-2003)
S. Porder (2000-2001)
T. Oliver (2004)
Liz Alter (2004, 2007)
Tanya McKittrick (2004)
M. Pespeni (2005-2006)
M. Pinsky (2006-2007)
K. Miklaz (2006-2007)
C. Tepolt (2008-2009)
M. Jensen (2008-2009)