Phoebe Zarnetske, Ph.D.

Phoebe studies how climate change and species invasions affect the distribution and composition of ecological communities. Interactions among species (e.g., competition, predation, mutualism) are fundamental to species distributions and the composition of ecological communities. However, current methods predicting the effects of climate change on species take a single-species approach and leave out these important interactions. As a YCEI postdoctoral fellow at Yale, Phoebe is developing more robust predictive models that incorporate multiple interacting species. Ultimately, these models will improve our ability to predict the effects of climate change on species and ecological communities, and will identify which types of species interactions will mediate or exacerbate these effects. These models will also help inform species conservation and management strategies both currently and into the future. Phoebe has a Ph.D. in Zoology from Oregon State University, a Masters in Ecology from Utah State University, and a B.A. in Biology and Environmental Science from Colby College.