Author: kdh73

I am interested in why behavioral variation exists among individuals and how environmental change plays a role in its maintenance. My current research focuses on the variation of dispersal behavior in the Florida Scrub-Jay, a species that inhabits a dynamic habitat altered by frequent fires. Using field observations and modeling approaches, I am looking at the causes and consequences of different dispersal decisions in relation to the surrounding social and physical environment.

I’m a 5th year PhD candidate in Alex Flecker’s lab. I combine observational and experimental approaches to study how communities respond to disturbance. My dissertation work has taken me to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and the Ecuadorian Andes, where I work with collaborators to understand how the functional and taxonomic composition of stream insect communities changes following extreme flooding and landslides. In some respects, my research is the ecological equivalent of being an ambulance-chaser, as I take advantage of natural disturbance events as opportunities to understand mechanisms driving community responses. In addition to my research, I am passionate about teaching and outreach and co-host a podcast called “Making Waves” for the Society for Freshwater Science.

Broadly, I am interested in the interface between micro and macroevolution, and how microevolutionary processes generate macroevolutionary patterns. I don’t believe micro and macroevolution are different phenomena. Rather, I believe that they are different manifestations of the same underlying process. As such, I am interested in whether or not there are ‘universal laws’ that govern connect and govern evolutionary processes at multiple scales, through time and space. Some of the questions that guide my research include: How do the actions of individual organisms and/or the characters of species propagate through evolutionary scales to generate phylogenetic patterns? Likewise, how might phylogeny constrain evolutionary potential? What are the roles of evolutionary contingency and convergence in generating patterns of biodiversity?

One of the manifestations of this set of questions is a pronounced heterogeneity in the rate of evolution across the tree of life. Rather than proceeding in a clock-like manner, the dominating signal of evolution at deep phylogenetic scales seems to be one of spurts of change interspersed with periods of (relative) stasis. Such patterns are captured both in phenotypes (in the fossil record), and in the genomes of living taxa. In birds, I recently documented  that heterogeneity in rate of molecular evolution across birds may be particularly extreme; the fastest evolving bird lineages (at least in terms of DNA sequences) seem to be evolving almost twenty times faster than lineages evolving at the slowest rates. It turns out that the rate of molecular evolution in birds is highly correlated to life history evolution.

In addition to my research, I’m very interested in how best to teach macroevolutionary thinking. While at Cornell, I’ve designed and taught my own curriculum in three macroevolution-focused ‘writing in the majors’ seminars. Over the last few years, I’ve also given a number of public outreach lectures to try to directly connect with non-academics and to explain where some of their tax dollars are going. Working with the Laboratory of Ornithology also empowers me to communicate the results of my work to the public through various media outlets. I recently had an opportunity to consult on the reboot of ’The Magic School Bus,’ which is now on Netflix. Going forward I am excited about the possibility of contributing to other educational programs as well.

In the time I’m not thinking about evolution, I can often be find on various social media platforms (@jakeberv), or consuming all kinds of movies, TV, art and music. I also used to be pretty into photography and am now rediscovering it as a creative outlet—hopefully will get back into sharing stuff on the web soon.

I am a PhD student in the Agrawal lab studying local adaptation in insect-plant interactions. As a biologist, I enjoy looking for patterns in nature! I am obsessed with the variation of behavioral patterns that I find among populations of insects and how that relates to geographic gradients and the relationship with their host plants. Currently I am working on understanding whether behavioral traits in specialized insects are locally adapted and the consequences for population divergence in coevolved systems.

Milkweeds and the community of insects they support are a great system to work on the topic of local adaptation because the plants and insects have adapted to each other: milkweed plants produce latex and cardenolides, secondary metabolites that are really toxic, and the specialized insects that feed on them have physiological and behavioral traits to counteract these toxins. If a milkweed population becomes more or less toxic, it might determine what type of insects can survive on that population.

I spend my summers looking for milkweed patches, hunting for milkweed stem weevils in the Northeast and Midatlantic regions, and performing behavioral assays in the greenhouse or in common gardens in the field. I am also starting to use landscape genetic tools to understand the demography and evolutionary history of these weevils, so ask me a bit more about that in a few months.

To learn more about the distribution of milkweed stem weevils, I started a citizen science project that you can get involved with! Check it out here: http://citsci.org/cwis438/browse/project/Project_Info.php?ProjectID=811&WebSiteID=7

When I am not working on my research projects, I work on increasing and maintaining diversity in the sciences, learn and hopefully apply different teaching methodologies to improve STEM education. In my free time, I do all the things that Stepfanie does in her free time. Except for the dog part because I have a cute cat instead. Stepfanie we should talk more!  I guess I also spend a big part of my days reading news about Colombia, Canada, and the USA, and daydreaming about bats and rafting.