Ongoing Research Projects:
I. Systematics and Taxonomy of North American Polygyrid Land Snails
II. Population genetics and ecology
III. Conservation Biology

Conservation biology is a crisis-driven discipline which requires an understanding of evolutionary and ecological influences on populations. Much of my research is aimed at gathering the genetic, ecological, and spatial data to allow land snail conservation efforts to proceed on a firm scientific foundation. A conservation-oriented project that I am working on with colleagues at the University of Alabama and the University of Louisiana-Monroe examines patterns of land snail distribution in Alabama, using museum records, GIS, and spatial overlay analyses.

The purpose of this project is to identify areas of high invertebrate diversity that are of conservation priority in the state of Alabama and overlay this with areas that are currently protected by federal or state lands. We are working on the snails in Alabama because this state’s land snail diversity has been well relatively well documented and the state contains multiple biogeographic regions. Initial findings show no correlation between conserved areas and species diversity. In the figure to the right you can see that the areas of highest land snail species richness in red are not well covered by protected lands (in light blue).

My training has stressed interdisciplinary research and collaboration and has given me an appreciation for the benefits and drawbacks of doing multidisciplinary research. I am interested in collaborations on topics such as incorporation of ecological attributes of organisms with phylogenetic history and taxonomy, GIS-based spatial research into the driving factors of distributional patterns in land snails, spatial phylogeography, and enhancing the utility of museum collections through database linkage and innovative web-based applications.