To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we are excited to share a collection of blog posts showcasing the work of some of the BES community. In each post, they discuss their experiences in ecology, as well as what this year’s theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, means to them.

What work do you do?  

I’m really interested in how spatial context and scale impact eco-evolutionary dynamics. Right now, I’m using orchids as a model system to understand how spatial and temporal variation in things like community assemblages, climate, geologic formations, and pollinator relationships impact niche evolution, divergence, and hybridization. To answer these questions, my research integrates lots of large occurrence and climate datasets, phylogenomic data, field observations, and simulations.  

How did you get into ecology?  

When I first learned about it in depth, I was enthralled by the theory of natural selection. Thanks to some amazing high school teachers, all of the evolutionary discourse I learned was grounded in ecology—it’s the stage on which natural selection acts; it’s competition, change, and spatiotemporally idiosyncratic. Evolution doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and if we want to understand the origin, history, and fate of earth’s biodiversity, we must do so in the context of ecology. I really wanted to apply eco-evolutionary theory to literary and social studies in undergrad, so I did a biology minor alongside English and Philosophy degrees. I ended up doing a project about human impacts on ecological dynamism in a semi-contained system, and I realized (pretty late in my undergraduate career) that I was more interested in the dynamics of the system than the humans. Luckily, that project led me to mentors who provided research opportunities where I found my academic niche in the intersection of ecology and evolution. I eventually applied for grad school, and now I study the eco-evolutionary dynamics of plants.  

Who inspires you?  

There are so many people who inspire me. For example, I had the pleasure of working with a director at a national forest reserve on an ecological observation project, and she had been working there for 50 years. The dedication to her people and her place made her a force for positive change and continuous innovation. She provided so many research opportunities to her ever-growing network of retired professionals, undergraduate students, field technicians, and career academics. She taught me how to create a truly collaborative and community-oriented research group. I’m inspired by all my mentors, collaborators, and teachers who have shaped my academic journey. I’m forever grateful to those women who, through sheer grit and tenacity, not only carved out a place for themselves in this field, but also for all of us.  

How do you think we could ‘accelerate action’ within ecology and science, to move towards gender equality? 

I think the best thing we can do is teach! We should focus more energy and effort on reaching younger female students, as early as elementary school, but especially junior high and high school. As scientists, we should use science outreach as a venue to reach eager students who may not have the resources or opportunities to engage with STEM otherwise. As women, we are the faces and voices that can make young women see a tangible future in our fields. If all of us were to focus on increasing STEM literacy and participation within our communities by hosting events, partnering with local high schools to create learning modules, forming clubs with open membership (etc.), we would make a huge collective global impact on gender equality in ecology.