Human activities alter biodiversity, disentangling and reassembling Darwin's tangled bank. Reassembled communities and altered species interactions reshape ecological and evolutionary processes.

Our team uses insects and their interactions with plants and other organisms to ask how species interactions shape biodiversity, how global change alters those interactions, and how the resulting shifts in interactions and biodiversity affect ecosystem function.

We use this framework to develop strategies for restoring diversity in the context of species interactions. 

Learn more on our research and publications pages.

The lab engages in outreach to help the public discover and appreciate insect biodiversity - the "little things that run the world."

Explore our ant-seed dispersal graphic novel and video game, created by undergrad Andrew Desso

We also help run Binghamton University's EcoBlitz - a biodiversity event in our natural areas!

Recent team highlights

We welcome new graduate students: Kelsey Horn, a Ph.D. student studying how mutualistic and antagonistic interactions influence forest wildflower restoration, and Anna Liu, an M.A. student whose research examines niches of ants spanning the Aphaenogaster species complex.

Former M.S. student Catherine Farrell has a first-author publication in Biodiversity and Conservation, "Not all forest edges are the same: agricultural edges have the greatest impact on ant-mediated seed dispersal of temperate forest ecosystems. LINK 

Aly Milks, was awarded a Graduate Student Excellence Award in Service and Outreach for her work on organizing an EcoBlitz event at the Ross Park Zoo. 

Rosebelle Ines was awarded a Phipps Conservatory Botany-in-Action Fellowship for her research and outreach on the restoration of ant-dispersed forest wildflowers!

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Rosebelle Ines, Aly Milks, Chris DeAngelis, Sarah Groh and Kirsten presented at the Entomological Society of America conference in Portland, OR.

Charlie Fridrich won a Beagle Graduate Research Grant to use RAD-seq to uncover how parasitoid population structure shapes community assembly in a range-expanding gall wasp.


Chris DeAngelis won a NATCHANGE graduate student research award to describe and uncover variation in cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) in ants spanning the Aphaenogaster species complex. 

Catherine Farrell defended her M.S. thesis examining the effects of forest edge types on seed dispersal, and we had several undergraduates defend their Honors theses: Andrew Desso, Zac Prete, Mary Regelski, Tim Kurpiewski, and Julian Marshall.