Started a new post-doc! Tetrapods and traits at Yale Univ

As of April 2015, I have a new position as post-doc on the NSF VertLife Terrestrial grant, an inter-institutional effort based at Yale Univ in New Haven, CT, USA aiming to reconstruct the evolution and trait diversification of all ~33,000 living species of tetrapods. This ambitious (!) project is spread across five universities (UC Berkeley, U Florida, George Washington U, Louisiana State U, and Yale) and is partnering with a range of databasing initiatives, including Map of Life (also based in the Jetz Lab) and AmphibiaWeb, to facilitate data storage, user-visualization, and consistent formats for ecological and geographic trait data.

As the sole post-doc on this grant, I am responsible for coordinating communication among team members and labs, and performing analyses of species-level phylogenetics and diversification. With my background in mammalian ecology and evolution, especially of rodents, I’ll be leading the Mammalia components of this tetrapod tree along with Jake Esselstyn’s group at LSU. Onward it is!

Update (Sept 2015): Here’s our new grant website.