Graduate Student, Biology
Thesis Title: Using biomechanical simulation modeling to predict adaptiveness of hunger-dependent architectural plasticity in orb-weaving spider webs
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Dr. Todd A. Blackledge
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About
I am a biologist with strengths in the ecology, taxonomy, and behavior of terrestrial arthropods, as well as a solid background in statistics. My goal is to become a "jack of all trades" within biology by the time I finish my doctorate; that is to say I aim to build a highly variegated toolkit of techniques applicable to answering fundamental questions in evolutionary biology.
As an undergraduate at Miami University, I studied the effects of herbicide exposure on the activity, survival, and intra- and interspecific behaviors (as mediated by infochemicals) within a predatory guild of wolf spiders and a carabid beetle. My master's research involves predicting the adaptive values of various foraging strategies of orb-weaving spiders via a simulation model incorporating web and prey kinematics data and assumptions derived from metabolic scaling laws.
I am set to defend my MS thesis at the University of Akron on May 3rd, and will subsequently be joining the Rudgers & Whitney lab at Rice University as their research technician!
