April 2024: Tyler is announced as the recipient of the 2023 Harper Prize from the British Ecological Society for his paper last year in Journal of Ecology!
April 2024: Can now officially announce that fellow Princeton alum Sophia Richter will be joining the lab this fall. Welcome Sophia!
March 2024: Two fantastic Notre Dame undergrads will be joining the lab this summer for research: Molly Quan will be working in Indiana, and Hunter Gonzalez will be working in Kenya. Both are being supported by fellowships from SURF!
February 2024: Renovations on our new lab space in Galvin Hall are officially underway!
March 2024: Two fantastic Notre Dame undergrads will be joining the lab this summer for research: Molly Quan will be working in Indiana, and Hunter Gonzalez will be working in Kenya. Both are being supported by fellowships from SURF!
February 2024: Renovations on our new lab space in Galvin Hall are officially underway!
January 2024: The entire lab (now featuring Society of Science Fellows postdoc Emily Wedel!) participated in Notre Dame's Walk the Walk Week by volunteering to sort and pack donated clothing and load donations for delivery. Looking forward to more service activities as a lab this year!
December 2023: Made it to the end of the Coverdale Lab's first semester! Wishing everyone happy holidays and looking forward to even more science, teaching, learning, and fun in 2024! And a special shout-out to grad student/lab musician Max Scheel, photographed below playing with the Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra in New York City.
December 2023: Made it to the end of the Coverdale Lab's first semester! Wishing everyone happy holidays and looking forward to even more science, teaching, learning, and fun in 2024! And a special shout-out to grad student/lab musician Max Scheel, photographed below playing with the Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra in New York City.
July 2023: Our review of the relationship between plant diversity and structural complexity is out today (and on the cover) in Journal of Ecology!
June 2023: New paper on the impacts of large herbivores on terrestrial ecosystem out in Current Biology with a great group of co-authors. We can't be positive, but at 451(!) references it might be the longest reference list of any paper in ecology.
April 2023 - We're still a few months from officially opening our doors, but the good news is already coming in for the newest Coverdale Lab members: grad student Max Scheel was awarded funding from ND-LEEF for summer fieldwork and grad student Evan Foster was awarded an NSF-GRFP to support his research in Kenya. Congrats Max and Evan!
March 2023 - Had an incredible time at the Savanna Science Network Meeting in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Met lots of great folks, planned some exciting new projects, and even got in a day of field work.
April 2023 - We're still a few months from officially opening our doors, but the good news is already coming in for the newest Coverdale Lab members: grad student Max Scheel was awarded funding from ND-LEEF for summer fieldwork and grad student Evan Foster was awarded an NSF-GRFP to support his research in Kenya. Congrats Max and Evan!
March 2023 - Had an incredible time at the Savanna Science Network Meeting in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Met lots of great folks, planned some exciting new projects, and even got in a day of field work.
December 2022 - Accepted just in time for the holidays: a new review (and theoretical framework) with Andrew Davies exploring the relationship between plant diversity and structural complexity in Journal of Ecology.
July 2022 - New paper out with Anurag Agrawal in Ecology: long-term suppression of insect herbivores causes a loss of induced (but not constitutive) defenses in horsenettle (Solanum carolinense). Cool parallels with previous results from African savannas!
June 2022 - It's official: The Coverdale Lab will open its doors in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame in Fall 2023! Updates to follow, but in the meantime please reach out if you're interested in joining our group next year!
March 2022 - Nice surprise this morning: Courtney Reed's awesome photo on the cover of Ecology for our new data paper on large mammal exclosures in Kenya!
July 2022 - New paper out with Anurag Agrawal in Ecology: long-term suppression of insect herbivores causes a loss of induced (but not constitutive) defenses in horsenettle (Solanum carolinense). Cool parallels with previous results from African savannas!
June 2022 - It's official: The Coverdale Lab will open its doors in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame in Fall 2023! Updates to follow, but in the meantime please reach out if you're interested in joining our group next year!
March 2022 - Nice surprise this morning: Courtney Reed's awesome photo on the cover of Ecology for our new data paper on large mammal exclosures in Kenya!
January 2022 - Successful trip to Mpala Research Centre with undergrad superstar Ella Bradford and others from the Davies Lab! Mapped the entire 20,000ha property with high-resolution LiDAR and RGB; see below for a sneak-peek at some preliminary imagery.
November 2021 - Just wrapped up a second guest lecture (on measuring conservation success) in OEB65: Conservation Biology! Great students and a very fun interactive activity about the ongoing restoration of Gorongosa National Park.
November 2021 - Harvard undergrad research assistant Ella Bradford is awarded a travel grant from the Center for African Studies to join us at Mpala Research Centre in January 2022!
November 2021 - New data paper (Ecological consequences of large herbivore exclusion in an African savanna: 12 years of data from the UHURU experiment) accepted at Ecology. This promises to be a great resource for folks working in savannas and is Nathaniel Carlson's (Cornell '23) first publication!
November 2021 - Harvard undergrad research assistant Ella Bradford submitted her first grant proposal to help with fieldwork at Mpala Research Centre in January 2022. Fingers crossed!
October 2021 - Two great elephant photos by Rob Pringle for our paper on savanna lianas in this week's issue of PNAS: one on the cover and one accompanying a nice write-up in the In This Issue section!
November 2021 - New data paper (Ecological consequences of large herbivore exclusion in an African savanna: 12 years of data from the UHURU experiment) accepted at Ecology. This promises to be a great resource for folks working in savannas and is Nathaniel Carlson's (Cornell '23) first publication!
November 2021 - Harvard undergrad research assistant Ella Bradford submitted her first grant proposal to help with fieldwork at Mpala Research Centre in January 2022. Fingers crossed!
October 2021 - Two great elephant photos by Rob Pringle for our paper on savanna lianas in this week's issue of PNAS: one on the cover and one accompanying a nice write-up in the In This Issue section!
October 2021 - Published today in American Journal of Botany: Evolution of shade tolerance is associated with attenuation of shade avoidance and reduced phenotypic plasticity in North American milkweeds.
October 2021 - Very excited to (virtually) visit Kennesaw State University for a seminar in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Organismal Biology on October 6th!
September 2021 - Almost six years after we started...our paper on megaherbivore effects on African savanna lianas is officially out in PNAS! Many thanks to Morgan Kelly and (the aptly named) Liana Wait for this great write-up for the Princeton High Meadows Environmental Institute.
October 2021 - Very excited to (virtually) visit Kennesaw State University for a seminar in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Organismal Biology on October 6th!
September 2021 - Almost six years after we started...our paper on megaherbivore effects on African savanna lianas is officially out in PNAS! Many thanks to Morgan Kelly and (the aptly named) Liana Wait for this great write-up for the Princeton High Meadows Environmental Institute.
August 2021 - Thrilled and honored to have been selected for the Building a Better Fieldwork Future (BBFF): Preventing Sexual Harassment and Assault in Field Settings workshop through Camino at UCSC! As a Certified Prevention Trainer, I'll be able to provide workshops to groups interested in learning more about preventing sexual harassment in the field and ensuring that fieldwork is a safe, fun, and equitable part of ecology. Get in touch after October if you're interested in hosting a training!
July 2021 - More exciting news: our paper on the critical role of wild megaherbivores in preventing liana infestation in African savannas was accepted at PNAS! Many thanks to all collaborators, but a special shout-out to former undergrad all-star and co-first author Ryan O'Connell, who started collecting data for this project in 2015!
July 2021 - Started new postdoc with Andrew Davies at Harvard OEB! Check out a great video summary (starting around 47 minutes) of one of the projects I'll be working on funded by the Star-Friedman Challenge. Excited to return to Mpala Research Centre early next year!
May 2021 - New paper with Anurag Agrawal on the evolution of shade tolerance in milkweeds accepted at American Journal of Botany! My first (but definitely not last) foray into milkweeds and phylogenetic comparative methods
July 2021 - More exciting news: our paper on the critical role of wild megaherbivores in preventing liana infestation in African savannas was accepted at PNAS! Many thanks to all collaborators, but a special shout-out to former undergrad all-star and co-first author Ryan O'Connell, who started collecting data for this project in 2015!
July 2021 - Started new postdoc with Andrew Davies at Harvard OEB! Check out a great video summary (starting around 47 minutes) of one of the projects I'll be working on funded by the Star-Friedman Challenge. Excited to return to Mpala Research Centre early next year!
May 2021 - New paper with Anurag Agrawal on the evolution of shade tolerance in milkweeds accepted at American Journal of Botany! My first (but definitely not last) foray into milkweeds and phylogenetic comparative methods
April 2021 - Good news on the funding-front: my proposal to use high-resolution LiDAR to investigate the effects of defaunation on plant communities with Andrew Davies (Harvard OEB) in African savannas was funded by the Star-Friedman Challenge Fund! Rest assured that someone else will be doing all of the drone piloting...some details here, more to follow soon!
September 2020 - Officially started as a Visiting Fellow in Andrew Davies' lab at Harvard! Looking forward to using remote sensing to understand variation in plant community structure at unprecedented (for me!) spatial scales.
August 2020 - Despite COVID-related hurdles, just wrapped up a huge field/greenhouse season in Ithaca: twenty-five species, 1,800+ plants, and more prickles than I could count.
September 2020 - Officially started as a Visiting Fellow in Andrew Davies' lab at Harvard! Looking forward to using remote sensing to understand variation in plant community structure at unprecedented (for me!) spatial scales.
August 2020 - Despite COVID-related hurdles, just wrapped up a huge field/greenhouse season in Ithaca: twenty-five species, 1,800+ plants, and more prickles than I could count.
May 2020 - New paper led by Jen Guyton on the effects of mammal restoration on plant communities in Gorongosa National Park out in Nature Ecology and Evolution!
March 2020 - Superstar Cornell undergraduate Nathaniel Carlson ('23) receives not one, but two grants for summer research: a Morley Student Research Grant from Cornell and the Elizabeth Gardner Norweb Summer Environmental Studies Scholarship from the Garden Club of America!
December 2019 - The year isn't over yet! Just heard that my proposal to link individual- and community-level shifts in physical plant defenses was funded by The Atkinson Center Sustainable Biodiversity Fund; a Cornell undergraduate and I will be traveling to Kenya to do this work in 2020!
December 2019 - New paper and commentary out this month -- great way to end 2019!
March 2020 - Superstar Cornell undergraduate Nathaniel Carlson ('23) receives not one, but two grants for summer research: a Morley Student Research Grant from Cornell and the Elizabeth Gardner Norweb Summer Environmental Studies Scholarship from the Garden Club of America!
December 2019 - The year isn't over yet! Just heard that my proposal to link individual- and community-level shifts in physical plant defenses was funded by The Atkinson Center Sustainable Biodiversity Fund; a Cornell undergraduate and I will be traveling to Kenya to do this work in 2020!
December 2019 - New paper and commentary out this month -- great way to end 2019!
August 2019 - New Cornell undergraduate assistant Nathaniel Carlson ('23) joins the plant defense team!
July 2019 - Paper on variation in defense phenotype in African plants accepted at Oikos; more importantly, the first publication for former Princeton undergrads Ian McGeary and Ryan O'Connell!
June 2019 - Cover article in Nature with Rob Pringle et al. about the impact of invasive predators on prey behavior and co-existence!
February 2019 - Really nice piece (written by Jackie Swift, photos by Dave Burbank) on the work I'm currently doing at Cornell!
July 2019 - Paper on variation in defense phenotype in African plants accepted at Oikos; more importantly, the first publication for former Princeton undergrads Ian McGeary and Ryan O'Connell!
June 2019 - Cover article in Nature with Rob Pringle et al. about the impact of invasive predators on prey behavior and co-existence!
February 2019 - Really nice piece (written by Jackie Swift, photos by Dave Burbank) on the work I'm currently doing at Cornell!
October 2018 - Great blog post out today by Fred Singer on our recent plant defense paper in Ecology.
August 2018 - New paper out on plant defenses in Ecology, including a cool cover photo!