Climate change is predicted to result in increased average temperatures and climate variability across the globe. Shifts in climate are likely to affect the distribution, quality, and quantity of essential nutritional resources for terrestrial consumers, while at the same time changing their nutritional requirements. Understanding how these shifts will affect the success of organisms is crucial to be able to accurately predict species responses to climate change.

Thus, I am broadly interested in how organisms allocate nutrients in a thermally variable environment. My current work focuses on deciduous forest ants in the genus Aphaenogaster. They are an ideal model system to study the nutritional effects of climate change because they occur across a wide thermal gradient, distinct nutritional resources are used by different ant colony members, they are numerically abundant, and they provide essential ecosystem services. The bulk of my work aims to link the nutritional ecology and thermal biology of ants to biogeochemistry, organismal performance, functional traits, and biochemical characteristics of ants. Please see my website for more information.