People
Principal Investigator
Michael Reed
Reed Lab
Tufts University
Dana Laboratory
165 Packard Ave., Room 218A
Medford, MA 02155
Office: 617-627-3544
Current Lab Members
Molly Taylor
Current PhD Student
I am a PhD candidate interested in the conservation of late-successional and old-growth forests. My work focuses on the ecological values of small, fragmented patches of old forest and isolated, old trees on an industrial timber landscape in northern Maine. I'm interested in old-growth mosses and lichens as well as tree-related microhabitats as indicators of old growth forest conditions. I am committed to research that is actionable for land managers and supports effective conservation efforts.
Jessica Cañizares
Current PhD Student
I am a PhD student and doctoral fellow for Tufts' Water Diplomacy IGERT. My research interests involve assessing risk and vulnerability and developing tools that help quantify or predict risk for species and habitats. Examples of methods I am currently using include predictive geospatial models, network analysis and statistical early warning signals of extinction. I am particularly interested in wetland loss along the Atlantic Flyway, especially in the Caribbean, and how this affects migrating shore and water birds. In addition, I am interested in interdisciplinary social-ecological approaches to investigate human-wetland-bird interactions and potential mutual gains for people and wildlife.
Adam Eichenwald
Current PhD Student
I focus on the overlap between community ecology and conservation biology. Species don't exist in isolation, they interact with one another through predation, competition, parasitism, and mutualism. My research examines how these interactions can inform our efforts to conserve ecosystems. The cornerstone of my work is community viability analysis, an extension of the popular tool population viability analysis. I am currently using this tool to predict how the loss of desert microrefugia (due to the decline of a keystone species) might impact the rest of the ecosystem both under current and climate change conditions. This research combines both mathematical modeling and surveys in the field.
Jonah Levy
Current PhD Student
They/them pronouns. I am a first-year PhD student and Provost Leadership Fellow studying island introductions and the influence of land-use change on species-habitat relationships in boreal bird communities. I received my Bachelor's in 2018 from Williams College, where I studied cultural evolution in Savannah sparrows, and have made my way to Tufts via a series of migrations and dispersal events as a field technician--most recently with the Maine Breeding Bird Atlas. I'm especially passionate about the disjunct boreal communities of New England, and I am excited to continue research in this realm for the foreseeable future. Conservation of natural communities must reflect and bolster our uplift of human communities; thus, I'm also committed to building equity and justice frameworks into my conservation work.
Current Undergraduate Research Students
Bridget Bauman
Bridget is an undergrad using GIS to determine where wetlands to support endangered Hawaiian waterbirds might be best placed to reduce flooding risks of developed areas (a nature-based solution to flooding). This work is being done in collaboration with Charles van Rees (Univ. of Georgia).
Alanna Jacob
Alanna is an undergrad working on developing a food web for chimpanzees in Kibale National Park. This work is being done in collaboration with Zarin Machanda.
Emma Jewel
Emma is an undergrad doing GIS modeling to determine the most appropriate locations to reintroduce the endangered Hawaiian Gallinule to Molokai. This work is being done in collaboration with Charles van Rees (Univ. of Georgia).
Kiernan Tierney
Kiernan is an undergrad working with Molly on the thermal properties of forest legacy patches of late-successional and old-growth forest in the commercial forests of northern Maine. This work is being done in collaboration with John Hagan (Our Climate Common).