Lauren C. Ponisio
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My research aim is to discover new insights into how communities form, evolve, and persist through time and space, aiding in the prediction and prevention of community collapse. I combine modeling, synthesis and field-based work, and adhere to the principles of reproducible, open science.
In addition, my personal connection to issues concerning agriculture sustainability as a native of the Central Valley and Latina woman has motivated me to study how to design agricultural systems to better support humans and wildlife. I have investigated strategies for designing agricultural systems to promote biodiversity conservation and the links between conservation strategies and improving livelihoods. Beyond promoting biological diversity, my second mission in life is to increase human diversity in the sciences. Because people draw upon their life experiences to inform their science, a diversity of backgrounds is necessary to promote the advancement of science. |
Rebecca Hayes |
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PhD student
Rebecca received her bachelor’s degree from University of Pittsburgh where she worked on creating plant-pollinator networks in California serpentine seep communities. Staying on as a research technician at University of Pittsburgh following her graduation, she completed a project exploring relationships between floral UV patterns and flower microbe UV tolerance to understand how traits usually thought to aid in pollinator attraction also influence the plant microbiome. Most recently, she worked at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab contributing data to a 48-year long survey of alpine floral phenology. For her Ph.D., Rebecca is interested in research at the interface of plant-pollinator-microbe interactions and conservation. |
Nicole Martinez |
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PhD student
Nicole's general interest is in ecological interactions, entomology, and botany. She is from Puerto Rico where she studied the effects and changes in community dynamics on plant-pollinator interaction networks caused by hurricanes. Nicole is mainly interested in plant-pollinator interactions and how those interactions can be affected by different variables such as invasive species, natural disasters, and anthropogenic disturbances. She is also interested in how pollinators as drivers of natural selection can influence breeding systems in plants. |
Rose McDonald |
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PhD student
Rose joined Dr. Ponisio’s lab in Fall 2022 after working as a research technician at the Montana State University where she studied honey host-pathogen interactions. She previously worked as a field technician at the University Wisconsin Madison, analyzing the impact of landscape composition on wild bee populations. She received her bachelor’s degrees of biology and history from UMass Amherst in 2021. For her Ph.D., Rose is reconstructing wild pollinator habitats within managed forests and is also interested in studying the underlying drivers of pathogen spread in wild bee communities. |
Jesse Fan Brown |
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Masters student
Jess received their bachelor's degree in Ecology from UC Santa Cruz, where they studied competition dynamics between honeybees and native pollinator species in Anza-Borrego State Park. They have worked extensively on scrubland habitat restoration in the Zayante sandhills, Santa Cruz coastal dunes, and Marin Headlands. Jess is fascinated by oligolectic and habitat-specialist bees and is interested in the potential of landscape-scale habitat restoration to buffer specialized bee species against local extinction. For their masters, they will be surveying Northwest forests to examine pollinator resource use in landscapes that are intensively managed for timber harvest. |
Emmanuelle Brito
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Visiting PhD student, CAPES – UFG Brazil
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Jocelyn Zorn |
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Lab manager
Jocelyn is a molecular ecology specialist. She received her bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied biology and classical guitar. Before joining the Ponisio Lab, Jocelyn interned for the Lewis B. and Dorothy J. Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics at the New York Botanical Garden. While at the New York Botanical Garden, Jocelyn studied the systematics and evolution of Characeae, a lineage of freshwater green algae. She has conducted field research in the USA, Costa Rica, and Panama. Jocelyn is interested in microbiome and pollen metabarcoding, molecular methods development, and natural history curation. |
Contact: jocelynz at uoregon
Alejandro Santillana |
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Research assistant
Alejandro received his bachelor's degree from the University of Texas, Austin where he studied ecology, evolution, and behavior. He studies the impact of climate change and land conversion on plant-pollinator networks in collaboration with the Jha lab at UT Austin. He surveys, identifies and curates pollinator insects in the Sky Islands and California Resurvey projects. |
Hannah Lewack |
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Undergraduate researcher
Hannah is a fourth year undergraduate majoring in biology at the University of Oregon. Her interests are in host-parasite interactions and preserving pollinator health. Hannah has studied pollinators in high alpine meadows around Oregon and helps regularly with molecular work in the lab. |
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Lab alumni |
