People

Kevin McGraw (lead PI), Arizona State University, CAP LTER scientist
McGraw is a behavioral ecologist and physiologist in the School of Life Sciences (SOLS) at ASU and focuses on the impacts of urbanization and specific human activities (e.g. bird feeder use/cleanliness) on the health, nutrition, behavior, and sexual signaling systems of locally abundant songbirds in Phoenix, AZ.

Paige Warren (co-PI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst, CAP LTER scientist
Warren is an urban ecologist with over 20 years’ experience of working with CAP LTER and extensive experience leading interdisciplinary research teams. Her work examines the social-ecological dimensions of urban biodiversity, avian community ecology, and trophic dynamics.

Chad Johnson (co-PI), Arizona State University, CAP LTER scientist. Johnson is an urban behavioral ecologist who has been studying the effects of urbanization on arthropod behavior, ecology, and evolution for 15 years. In particular, his group has focused largely on black widow spiders as urban pests, asking whether phenotypic plasticity promotes their success in cities.

Chris Schell (co-PI), University of California Berkeley, CAP LTER scientist
Schell is an urban evolutionary ecologist and behavioral biologist who has studied the organismal consequences of human-carnivore interactions for the past 9 years. His recent works articulate the consequences of systemic racism on urban biodiversity, as well as advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in ecology and evolution disciplines.

Sarah Diamond (co-PI), Case Western Reserve University
Diamond is an evolutionary ecologist with expertise in physiological trait variation, plastic and evolutionary mechanisms, and responses to global climate change and urbanization.

Ryan Martin (Senior Personnel), Case Western Reserve University.
Martin is an evolutionary ecologist whose research focuses on how biotic interactions and environmental variation drive natural selection and how plasticity and evolution interact during adaptation to changing environments.

David Fleming, Arizona State University.
David is an entomologist with 10 years of experience collecting, identifying and preserving insect specimens of the Sonoran Desert. He has extensive experience in fieldwork, insect identification and data analysis. As a research specialist with CAP LTER since 2015, David studies the effects of urbanization on insect populations and ecology in the Phoenix metropolitan area

Emilie C. Snell-Rood (Advisory Council) University of Minnesota
Emilie’s research takes both a basic and applied approach to understanding responses to environmental change. Why are some developmental programs more flexible than others? What are the consequences of such variation in plasticity for survival and diversification novel environments? With focus on several novel, anthropogenic environments — cities, agricultural environments and roadsides.

Simone Des Roches (Advisory Council) University of Washington
Simone takes a multi-faceted approach to studying urban eco-evo; first, working with the Urban Ecology and Evolution Network to understand the functioning of urban ecosystems by and with human society, and second, working with the Wetland Ecosystem Team to study shoreline restoration with community scientists.

Ruth Rivkin (Advisory Council) University of Manitoba
Ruth currently studies the population genomic consequences of climate change on polar bears, working with Polar Bears International and Environment and Climate Change International. Ruth completed a PhD on urban evolutionary ecology at the University of Toronto, where she studied the role urbanization plays in shaping the ecology and evolution of species and their interactions with one another.

Shane Campbell-Staton (Advisory Council) Princeton University
Shane’s research is focused on understand adaptive modification of complex phenotypes in response to anthropogenic change. The Campbell-Staton Group integrates diverse experimental and methodological techniques to gain a deeper understanding of how human activity shapes biological stress and evolution in the modern world.