Research Interests

When I finished my degree in Botany at UCSB my main interest was in systematics and plant geography. After spending time in tropical Mexico working on a floristic inventory of Tabasco, a poorly known state, I came to appreciate the importance of ecology for understanding plant distributions. As time passed my knowledge of local floras allowed me to participate in various projects, including vegetation surveys, ecological restoration, invasive plant eradication, and rare species studies. I currently manage a project on Santa Rosa Island studying three rare annual endemics, trying to understand how they persist despite introduced exotic plants and variable rainfall patterns. Moving from identifying species in the field to understanding the factors determining to their distribution and survival has been a rewarding process.