Dr. Elizabeth Hadly
Department of Biology
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-5020

hadly@stanford.edu
650.725.2655 (phone)
650.723.0589 (fax)

I am a small-mammal ecologist trained in quantitative paleobiology and taphonomy and am interested in how small mammal communities have responded to changes in climate and anthropogenic land-use across space and through time in the last 10,000 years.  I investigate the baseline structure and dynamics of historical small mammal communities using naturally occurring modern and fossil archives, generated through raptor predation.  This applied paleontological approach is motivated by the need to draw from the past to better understand and predict the future fates of species and ecosystems in this rapidly changing world. 

My postdoctoral research is focused on reconstructing local climate histories and the simultaneous responses of small mammal communities in two biodiversity hotspots - the northeastern Sierra Nevada and the northern Great Basin (California-Nevada-Utah).  By applying  multi-model inference techniques to a series of spatially nested Holocene fossil records along an east-west transect, I am assessing the degree to which temperature, moisture availability, habitat heterogeneity, and the intensity of anthropogenic land-use have driven patterns of small mammal community restructuring within and between distinct but related biomes and across decadal to multi-millennial time-scales.  

I am a fourth year PhD student interested in the origin and adaptations of the genus Australopithecus (Hominidae). My dissertation will focus on the evolution of the early hominid shoulder girdle, testing hypotheses of the primitive condition of this anatomical region and if/what trends are exhibited by Australopithecus and other early hominid genera. I am also interested in the causes of evolution (in the Hominidae and other Pliocene African mammals), especially investigations that explore the relationship between climate and the many aspects of evolutionary change.
      I joined the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Research Project (Afar Depression, Ethiopia), led by Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, in 2007. This new research project has been working in Pliocene deposits, and has thus far produced thousands of new fossil specimens (both hominids and non-hominid vertebrates) that will greatly improve our knowledge of a poorly sampled period in human evolution. I have also worked at the paleontological sites of Gona, Ethiopia; Weyto, Ethiopia and Goba’ad Basin, Djibouti.
      In the past, my research has included studies of Primate tooth formation and pathology (as an undergraduate at Case Western Reserve University) and functional morphology studies of Pliocene African antelopes. In the future, I hope to expand my research to investigate other anatomical regions of Australopithecus and to include taxonomic and morphological studies of non-hominid mammalian groups.

As a rotating student in the Hadly lab, I applied my interest in the role of genetic diversity in ecological interactions to small mammals. A fellow rotating student, Hillary Young, and I undertook a catch-and-release survey of the small mammals at Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, a 1,200-acre preserve in the eastern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Tissue samples taken from one of the most abundant animals, the California vole (Microtus californicus), allowed me to ask questions about the genetic diversity and connectivity of this grassland species.

I am a first year PhD student, still searching for a dissertation topic.  I am broadly interested in the field of biomechanics, and my recent interests have specifically led me toward fluid dynamic forces experienced by marine invertebrates.  I have studied the hydrodynamic forces  acting on a settling Hydroides elegans (a sessile polychaete tube worm) larva using dynamically scaled physical models and how drag forces are effected by the organism's developmental stage and orientation relative to flow.  Larvae of this size operate at an intermediate Reynold's number range, which is poorly understood and requires direct measurement.  My past projects have ranged from biomechanical scaling of force generation in crab claws to modeling dinosaur flight.

I am interested in understanding the evolution and maintenance of biological diversity across multiple scales of space and time, with both theoretical and applied/conservation goals in mind.   I have been focusing on two projects, the first involves spatial structure of grasshopper communities in central New Mexico.  Specifically, I am using patterns of species abundance, distribution and genetic variation across spatial and environmental gradients to understand how stochastic dispersal and deterministic niche differentiation structure ecological communities.  I use mathematical models to identify the signal of random processes such as stochastic demography and immigration, and experimental tests to understand potential niche variables, such as diet.  I am also interested in how macroecological patterns, such as the continental-scale association between species’ geographic ranges, can help identify ecological mechanisms that may be important to species coexistence.  The second project seeks to understand the process of macroevolution in a geographically and energetically explicit context.  To be a little less vague, we are studying how immigration patterns between North and South America have influenced the diversification of bird body sizes (a proxy for energy use) and vise versa, and ultimately what influence these two processes have had on the net diversification of bird species in the New World.

As a lab tech, I am assisting in several research projects in the Hadly Lab. I am interested in how climate changes affect organisms, so my research project focuses on the American pika, a small mammal that is restricted to montane habitat. Other studies have shown that many American pika populations have become extirpated since the last Glaciation, and extant populations have moved north as well as toward higher altitudes as a result of warming. I am quantifying morphological variations of pika skulls, and correlating them with environmental factors such as altitude, temperature, precipitation, and vegetation. Also, I plan to compare the genetics and morphology of extirpated populations with extant populations and fossil records.

I'm a junior majoring in Biology with a concentration in ecology and evolution. Currently I'm captured by pocket gophers (Thomomys). More specifically, how biomechanical skeletomuscular differences between 5 Northern Californian species created such modern-art-like distribution pattern across an environmentally heterogenous region.

I am a fourth year undergraduate at Stanford University majoring in Earth Systems with a focus in Biosphere. I am fascinated by historical ecology and biogeography and have been interested in the Hadly lab since first taking Liz's introductory seminar as a freshman in 2006. I am currently conducting Honors thesis research studying the biogeography of the common raven (Corvus corax) in Yosemite National Park.