Bio

I am a marine community ecologist investigating the role of biodiversity, species interactions, and anthropogenic change on coastal ecosystems. My research aims to answer fundamental questions regarding community and ecosystem structure that can be applied towards developing new and productive approaches to marine restoration.

Area(s) of Expertise

My research is focused around two broad themes:
1) How does global change affect fish communities and essential fish habitat?
2) Can incorporating positive interactions between and among foundation species alter restoration success and ecosystem functioning?

Within these themes, I investigate questions related to the effects of disturbance on estuarine ecosystems, incorporating positive (facilitations, mutualisms) and negative (grazing, predation) species interactions into conservation and restoration schema, and determining if/how ecological communities are shifting with changing climates. To answer these questions, I utilize a combination of manipulative field experiments and large-scale data analyses.

Publications

• Interactions between dense seasonal macroalgal mats and oysters on natural and constructed shellfish reefs , PeerJ (2026)
• Restoring surf and turf: Transferable lessons between marine and terrestrial restoration , Biological Conservation (2026)
• Evaluating Habitat Provisioning and Restoration Potential of a Subtropical Seagrass Species in a Temperate Estuary , Estuaries and Coasts (2025)
• Optimizing ecosystem restoration with facilitation cascades , BioScience (2025)
• Range expansion of the tropical predatory crab Eurytium limosum (Say, 1818) (Decapoda: Brachyura: Panopeidae) into temperate salt marshes along the eastern coast of the United States , Journal of Crustacean Biology (2025)
• Seasonal asynchrony and harvest diversification contribute to demersal finfish fisheries stability in Chesapeake Bay , Ecological Applications (2025)
• Evidence on the performance of nature-based solutions interventions for coastal protection in biogenic, shallow ecosystems: a systematic map , Environmental Evidence (2024)
• Harnessing ecological theory to enhance ecosystem restoration , Current Biology (2024)
• Long‐term data reveal that grazer density mediates climatic stress in salt marshes , Ecology (2024)
• Sediment carbon storage differs in native and non-native Caribbean seagrass beds , Marine Environmental Research (2023)