I’m a freshwater ecologist with specific interests in macroinvertebrate population and community dynamics and their influence on ecosystem processes. My research background includes questions of community responses to environmental gradients and conditions and the role of microbial stoichiometry in biogeochemical cycling in streams. In my current position as an aquatic entomologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, I am working on several projects from populations to ecosystems. INHS has a rich legacy in the fields of both freshwater ecology (think Stephen Forbes) and aquatic entomology (think Theodore Frison and Herb Ross), making it an exciting place to continue thinking about and answering questions that integrate life history of organisms and ecosystem functions.

I am also a mom, stepparent, wife, and many other things that make life colorful. A lot of my life looks like the photos on this page: carrying children, stomping in streams, hugging trees, bugs on our feet…