Sound-Induced Nectar Production in Borage
Recent work has shown that some plants are sensitive to the sound of bee wingbeats and will alter nectar production in response to these sounds.
For my master's thesis, I have been using controlled acoustic playback studies to measure if Borage responds to these sounds and whether these responses are age-dependent or time-dependent.
Morals & Emotions in Socio-scientific Reasoning
Students must apply scientific reasoning within important social contexts to issues like climate change, genetic engineering, and nuclear energy. This project aimed to uncover the role that moral and emotional reasoning play when biology students reason about controversial science issues such as genetic engineering.
Collective Learning in Fire Ant Colonies
For my undergraduate research thesis at the University of Georgia, I researched whether red imported fire ants could optimize a tool use behavior referred to as "paving," ultimately illustrating that colonies can improve of their paving behavior over time through strategic trade offs.
Personality in Clonal Raider Ants
As part of a summer internship at Harvard University, I assisted with a research project investigating if clonal raider colonies will shift task allocation when the personality structure of their colonies was altered.
Population Models in Langur Monkeys
I assisted PhD student Alexander Hofner in using RavenPro to analyze different call types of purple-faced and tufted gray langurs in Sri Lanka. These analyses were used to train a machine-learning model to update the population for these two endangered species
