Current members

Jessica Aguilar

Postdoctoral fellow
Email: jmagui at stanford dot edu
Web site

Jessica is an evolutionary ecologist interested in understanding the impacts of a plant diet on insects and their microbiomes. She earned her PhD in 2024 with Noah Whiteman at UC Berkeley studying interactions between the leaf-mining fly Scaptomyza flava, their host plants, and their gut microbiome. She joined the lab as an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in August 2024. Jessica is currently working on understanding the evolutionary dynamics of the bacteria and phage in the gut of the coffee berry borer beetle, especially in response to dietary plant toxins. She is passionate about creating welcoming, inclusive academic environments where people can thrive. When not taking care of bugs in the lab, she enjoys spending time with her family and sewing quilts.


Tadashi Fukami

Professor
E-mail: fukamit at stanford dot edu
CV

Tad's primary interest is to understand historical contingency in community assembly, but he is also broadly interested in how species interact with one another in ecosystems, and enjoys working with other lab members on the projects that they bring to the lab. He also studies traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and seeks to practice two-eyed seeing, especially in his role as Faculty Director of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve ('Ootchamin 'Ooyakma). He earned his PhD at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with Jim Drake and Dan Simberloff. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research in Aotearoa – New Zealand and Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa before joining the Stanford faculty in 2008.


Chloe Golde

PhD student
E-mail: cgolde at stanford dot edu

Chloe is interested in the interaction between microbial communities and their host. Chloe received degrees in Molecular Environmental Biology (BS) and Marine Science (BA) from UC Berkeley in 2022. During her undergraduate career, she studied the effect of climate change on giant clams and their symbionts, and worked at the Essig Museum of Entomology on their pollinator collections. After graduation, Chloe worked as a lab technician in Lauren O'Connell's lab at Stanford, studying spatial navigation and microbial interactions in amphibians. Chloe started her PhD study in fall 2024 and joined the lab in spring 2025 as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.


Rosa McGuire

Postdoctoral fellow
E-mail: rmcguire at stanford dot edu
Web site

Rosa is interested in combining theoretical and experimental approaches to study species interactions. She completed her PhD in 2023 with Priyanga Amarasekare at the University of California Los Angeles. She investigated how the temperature effects on life history traits scale up from individuals to population dynamics. Rosa worked with the bean beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, as her model organism. She found that maturation rate might represent a constraint to adaptation to warming, and that the temperature response of competition differs at low versus high temperature extremes, leaving populations prone to stochastic extinctions. Rosa joined the lab in 2023 as an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow and is studying temperature effects on community assembly using nectar microbes.


Ethan VanValkenburg

PhD student
E-mail: evanvalk at stanford dot edu
Web site

Ethan is interested in community ecology, plant-pollinator interactions, and how ecological networks respond to global change. He completed his BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He completed his honors thesis under Nate Sanders and Paul CaraDonna, studying sodium in nectar and its role in structuring plant-pollinator interactions at the Rocky Mountain Biological Station. During his undergraduate studies, he also investigated how climate and topography shape the dietary ecology and global biogeography of ungulate mammals with Catherine Badgley and Bian Wang. Ethan joined the lab in fall of 2023.


Yuerong Xiao

PhD student
Email: yuerongx at stanford dot edu

Yuerong is interested in the ecological role of disturbance in the development and maintenance of biodiversity. During their undergraduate studies at UCLA, they conducted research under Bob Wayne on the biodiversity analysis of LA River through environmental DNA techniques. Studying the ecosystem and cultural functions of the river's communities led Yuerong to develop passion for environmental education and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) as they learn from ecologists, Indigenous activists, artists, and citizen educators about the different meaning of restoration and stewardship. From 2022-2024, Yuerong worked under Joe Parker to test transgenic engineering in Dalotia coriaria (greenhouse rove beetle) for investigating the molecular and chemical basis of symbiosis. Joining the lab in fall 2024, Yuerong is excited to study how natural and man-made disturbances impact community assembly and functions, while also learning from TEK in their research. In their free time, Yuerong loves going on camping trips with friends, making hotpot, and bringing back cool rocks for their leopard gecko.


Affiliates

Andrea Nebhut

PhD student
Email: anebhut at stanford dot edu
Web site

Andrea is a community ecologist studying how the changing climate alters plant competition, with interests in native-invader competition, functional traits and resource use, and climate feedbacks. She received her BS in Biology and Environmental Studies from Trinity University, where she studied how shortwave UV-B radiation alters plant pigmentation with Jim Shinkle, and her MS in Forestry and Natural Resources from Purdue University, where she studied the community impacts of invasive Callery pear in early-successional meadow environments and competitive relationships between invaders and their recipient communities in California serpentine grasslands with Jeff Dukes. Andrea joined the lab as a PhD student co-advised by Jeff and Tad in 2022.


Emma Román

PhD student
Email: emmadroman at gmail dot com
Web site

Emma received an undergraduate degree from Middlebury College in Biology in 2022. Through her studies in Vermont, she developed a love for evolutionary ecology and microbial symbioses. While she enjoys terrestrial activities, such as gardening and hiking, in her free time, two internships and several courses she took during her undergraduate career opened her eyes to the wonders of aquatic research. From 2023 to 2024, Emma worked as a technician on a project centered around the symbioses between the coral reef fish, Siphamia tubifer, and the luminous bacterium, Photobacterium mandapamensis. This project was a collaboration between Alison Gould and Tad Fukami. Emma is currently a PhD student at Temple University, co-advised by Alison and Tad.


In addition, we often have undergraduate students in our lab, working on their thesis projects or assisting others to gain research experience. Many are funded by Stanford VPUE and NSF REU.

Our lab also hosts visiting students and scholars from other institutions. See below for former members.



Former members and current affiliation

PhD students

Matthew Knope, 2006-2012, Asst Professor, Univ Hawai‘i at Manoā
Melinda Kliegman, née Belisle, 2008-2013, Independent consultant
Holly Moeller, 2010-2015, Asssociate Professor, UC Santa Barbara
Devin Leopold, 2012-2017, Bioinformatician, Jonah Ventures
Po-Ju Ke, 2014-2019, Assistant Professor, National Taiwan University
Nick Hendershot, 2015-2020, Forest Ecologist, TNC
Priscilla San Juan, 2016-2022, Postdoc fellow, Natural History Museum of LAC
Callie Chappell, 2017-2023, Postdoc fellow, Stanford University
Magdalena Warren, 2018-2025, Postdoc fellow, Temple University

Visiting PhD students

Caroline Tucker, 2012, Environmental and ecological consultant
Tess Grainger, 2017, Assitant Professor, University of Guelph
Marion Donald, 2017, 2018, Researcher, Manaaki Whenua, New Zealand
Sonja Saine, 2023, Postdoc fellow, University of Helsinki

Postdoctoral fellows

Kabir Peay, 2010-2011, Professor, Stanford University
Ben Callahan, 2010-2014, Asssociate Professor, North Carolina State University
Rachel Vannette, 2011-2015, Professor, UC Davis
Peter Zee, 2013-2015, Asssociate Professor, University of Mississippi
Meike Wittmann, 2014-2015, Professor, Bielefeld University
Kai Zhu, 2014-2015, Associate Professor, University of Michigan
Manpreet Dhami, 2014-2017, Senior Researcher, Manaaki Whenua, New Zealand
Andrew Letten, 2015-2017, Senior Research Fellow, University of Queensland
Niv DeMalach, 2018-2019, Senior Lecturer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Megan Morris, 2018-2020, Manager, ORISE STEM Workforce Development
Leslie Decker, 2018-2021, Scientist, Recombia Biosciences
Amanda Wu, 2022-2023, Lecturer, Stanford University
Lucas Nell, 2022-2024, Postdoc fellow, Cornell University
Amaury Payelleville, 2023-2025, Assistant Professor, Université de Montpellier

Master's student

Noam Rosenthal, 2017-2018, PhD student, UCLA

Visiting scholars

Sergio Álvarez-Pérez, 2018, 2024, Assistant Professor, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Hirokazu Toju, 2015-2016, Professor, Kyoto University
Kaoru Tsuji, 2015, 2017, 2021-2022, Associate Professor, Kobe University

Technician

Marie-Pierre Gauthier, 2011-2014, Biological Scientist, University of Florida

Lecturer

Jessica Coyle, 2016-2018, Assistant Professor, St. Mary's College of California
Jesse Miller, 2018-2022, Natural Heritage Botanist, State of Washington

Research affiliate

Mifuyu Nakajima