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Interested in joining us? If you are a KSU undergraduate student and are excited about gaining some experience with field or laboratory research or a prospective graduate student through KSU's Master of Science in Integrative Biology (MSIB) program, please send me an email. Want to learn more about graduate school in our field? Here and here are some articles with good general advice about how to pursue a graduate degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.
graduate students
Hailey Wunder
Hailey joined the lab as an MSIB student in Fall 2025 and is studying alternative reproductive tactics in two-lined salamanders.
undergraduate students
Fer Montes de Oca Sierra
Fer joined the lab in Spring 2023 and has contributed to many projects—including fieldwork for green salamanders and patch-nosed salamanders in the Blue Ridge, the generation and analysis of genetic data to study phylogeography, and fieldwork, DNA extraction, and qPCR genotyping of alternative reproductive tactics in Eurycea.
Brian Dodson
Brian joined the lab in Fall 2024 and has participated in a variety of projects. Most recently, he has conducted fieldwork, DNA extraction, and qPCR genotyping of alternative reproductive tactics in Eurycea.
Cassie Ellenberger
Brian joined the lab in Summer 2025 and has conducted fieldwork, DNA extraction, and qPCR genotyping of alternative reproductive tactics in Eurycea.
Bridgette Popov
Bridgette joined the lab in Spring 2023 and has conducted salamander courtship trials to better document these fascinating behaviors in Appalachian salamanders.
Alyssa Dance
Alyssa joined the lab in Fall 2025 and is genotyping alternative reproductive tactics in two-lined salamanders to evaluate temporal trends in frequency.
Kameryn Kimbrough
Kameryn joined the lab in Fall 2025 and is evaluating eDNA methods to survey for a peculiar plethodontid salamander in challenging habitats.
Sam Dill
Sam began working in our lab in Fall 2025. He's designing aquaria and experiments for research about mating order and paternity in salamanders.
Aarya Gupta
Aarya joined our lab as a high school researcher in 2024 and has focused on applying bioinformatic methods for species delimitation.
lab alumni
Isabelle Flowers
Isabelle joined the lab in Spring 2025 and used molecular genetic methods to investigate potential toxin resistance in a local snake.
Cooper Kework
Cooper completed his MSIB in the lab in 2025. His thesis focused on spatial and temporal variation in the frequency of alternative reproductive tactics in two-lined salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains.
Ilana Reyes
Ilana joined the lab in Spring 2025 and investigated the use of citizen science data to study reptile color and behavior.
Bridgette Popov
Bridgette joined the lab in Spring 2023 and conducted salamander courtship trials to better document these fascinating behaviors in Appalachian salamanders.
Matthew McLendon
Matthew joined the lab in Fall 2023 and is exploring the application of new environmental DNA methods in plethodontid salamanders.
Lexi Bailey
Lexi joined the lab in Fall 2021 and has conducted laboratory behavioral trials to better understand how two-lined salamanders locate and choose mates. In Summer 2022, Lexi conducted salamander field research as part of KSU's Summer Undergraduate Research Program.
Ken Wang
Ken originally joined the lab as a high school researcher and studied salamander reproductive morphology in 2022. Then as an undergraduate at Georgia Tech, Ken continued to work in our lab (in collaboration with Dr. Joe Mendelson @ Zoo Atlanta) on toad phylogeography.
Raquel Gonzalez
Raquel was an MSIB student in the lab from Fall 2023–Fall 2024. She studied the range-wide population genomics of the Chamberlain's Dwarf Salamander—a species petitioned for federal listing.
Patrick Young
Patrick joined the lab in Fall 2023 and compared sampling biases from salamander occurrence data in museum records vs. citizen science databases.
Allison Vessell
Allison joined the lab in Fall 2022 and evaluated methods for determining salamander body condition and health.
Zaynab Massenburg
Zaynab joined the lab in Fall 2021 and conducted laboratory behavioral trials to better understand how two-lined salamanders locate and choose mates.
Sam Francus
Sam joined the lab in Fall 2023 and used genetic methods to screen a reptile species for toxin resistance in an effort to solve a local natural history riddle.
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