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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
Cooper Kework
Cooper joined the lab as an MSIB student in Fall 2023. He is studying alternative reproductive tactics in two-lined salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains.
undergraduate students
Fer Montes de Oca Sierra
Fer joined the lab in Spring 2023 and has contributed to many projects—including fieldwork in the Blue Ridge and the generation and analysis of genetic data to study salamander phylogeography.
Ilana Reyes
Ilana joined the lab in Spring 2025 and is investigating the use of citizen science data to study reptile color and behavior.
Isabelle Flowers
Isabelle joined the lab in Spring 2025 and is using molecular genetic methods to investigate potential toxin resistance in a local snake.
Brian Dodson
Brian joined the lab in Fall 2024 and is currently applying genomic methods to study alternative reproductive tactics in two-lined salamanders.
Bridgette Popov
Bridgette joined the lab in Spring 2023 and is conducting salamander courtship trials to better document these fascinating behaviors in Appalachian salamanders.
lab alumni
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.
Leah Rittenburg
Leah completed her MSIB in the lab in 2023. For her thesis, she conducted comprehensive field surveys to study how urbanization influences salamander life history traits and community composition.
Yatin Kalki
Yatin completed his MSIB in the lab in 2023. For his thesis, he used field and laboratory methods to better understand the nature of alternative reproductive tactics in salamanders.
Frankie McGowan
In 2021 and 2022, Frankie studied how color and pattern varied between sexes and reproductive tactics in two-lined salamanders.
Devan H. Faddis
From Fall 2021 – Fall 2022, Devan contributed to many lab efforts. Most notably, she conducted courtship trials to better understand sexual isolation between different species of two-lined salamanders and designed an experiment to understand how urbanization influences stream chemistry and salamander growth.
Jasmine Brown
In Fall 2022, Jasmine contributed to a variety of projects—including efforts to explore the genetic correlates of alternative reproductive tactics and our lab's first forays into Nanopore sequencing.
Emma Downing
From Fall 2021 – Fall 2022, Emma worked on a wide variety of projects in the lab. She designed and conducted field research to understand nest-site selection in urban salamanders and worked with museum specimens to evaluate how salamanders respond to land-use change. In Summer 2022, Emma led our lab's efforts to survey for the patch-nosed salamander using environmental DNA.
Karam Ittayem
In 2021 and 2022, Karam used environmental DNA (eDNA) methods to survey for chytrid fungi in urban streams.
Kelly-Ann McDonald
In Spring and Summer 2021, Kelly-Ann collected data from museum specimens and used geometric morphometric methods to study secondary sexual characters in salamanders.
Tyshiona Brandon
In Spring and Summer 2021, Tye collected data from museum specimens and used geometric morphometric methods to study secondary sexual characters in salamanders.
Jadin Cross
In Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, Jadin assembled and analyzed genome-wide SNP data to better understand the phylogeography of slimy salamanders in northern Georgia.
Jasmyne Blake-Sinclair
In Fall 2020, Jasmyne curated and analyzed observations from the citizen science databases, field notes, and scientific literature to better understand the phenology of nesting in two-lined salamanders. In Spring and Summer 2021, Jasmyne extracted and amplified DNA to identify a mysterious predator of an Appalachian salamander.
Tyler Schwartz
In Fall 2020, Tyler used his GIS skills to build maps and analyze data to understand how Eurycea are distributed among river drainages.
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