Current Members
Eric L Walters
Lab PI / Grand Poobah
Eric directs an amazing team of students and postdocs. His job is to facilitate their success. CV
Ella DiPetto
PhD Student, Research Fellow
Ella studies metrics of success of living shoreline restoration projects in coastal Virginia.
Oleksii Dubovyk
PhD Student, Fulbright Scholar
Oleksii studies functional rarity in bird communities of North America.
Alex Wright
MS Student
Alex is studying the effects of longleaf pine restoration on Florida bird communities.
Irosh Peiris
MS Student
Irosh is studying the role of birds as hosts in Gulf Coast tick distributions.
Maizer Sparkman
MS Student
Maizer studies the trophic niche of an introduced marine polychaete on marine foodwebs.
Laura George
Undergraduate Student
Laura is working on longleaf pine restoration and its effects on Florida bird communities.
Lab Alum
Samantha Glover
Former MS student
Sam studied Caribbean king crabs and their use in coral reef restoration. She is the manager of research & development at Oyster Seed Holdings.
Dr. Spencer Schubert
Former Postdoc / PhD student
Spencer studied frugivore mutualism networks. He is currently a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz studying tropical forest ecology.
Grant Bowers
Former MS student
Grant studied bird metacommunities of Chesapeake Bay islands. He is now a PhD student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Dr. Nick Flanders
Former PhD student
Nick studied bird-mistletoe relationships in the mid-Atlantic. He now manages the Blackwater Ecological Preserve for Old Dominion University.
Dr. Natasha Hagemeyer
Former PhD student
Natasha studied dispersal coalitions and population dynamics in acorn woodpeckers. She is head of data science for Agathos.
Dr. Sahas Barve
Former Postdoc
Sahas worked on movement and demographics of acorn woodpeckers. He is now the Director of Avian Ecology at Archbold Biological Station.
Chance Hines
Former MS student
Chance studied energetics of migrant bird stopover sites. He now works as a Research Biologist for the Center for Conservation Biology.
Dr. Vicki Garcia
Former Postdoc
Vicki worked on senescence in 3 species of cooperatively breeding bird species. She now works in Florida for the US Fish & Wildlife Service.
Andrew Arnold
Former MS student
Andrew studied migrant stopover ecology. He now works for the Health Department in Alabama.
Dr. Erin Heller
Former MS student
Erin studied bird-tick interactions and is now an Assistant Professor at Randolph College.
Anna Prinz (Brownson)
Former MS student
Anna studied reproductive skew in acorn woodpeckers. She is now at the Sandhills Ecological Institute.
Annie Coons (Sabo)
Former Lab Manager
Annie used to run our lab and keep us organized. She now oversees two amazing kids.
Collaborators
Professor Ben Hatchwell
University of Sheffield
Ben sits on the graduate committee of Chi Wei and shares our interests in the evolution of cooperative breeding and helping behavior.
Dr. Amanda Rodewald
Cornell University
Amanda serves on Oleksii Dubovyk’s graduate committee and shares our interests in the effects of urbanization on avian communities.
Dr. Brian McGill
University of Maine
Brian serves on Oleksii Dubovyk’s graduate committee and shares our interests in functional rarity and other patterns in animal communities.
Dr. Joey Haydock
Gonzaga University
Joey has worked on the woodpecker project since 1992 and conducts all of our parentage analyses and metrics of reproductive skew.
