I’m a conservation biologist who focuses predominantly on amphibians and reptiles. My work is centered on understanding whether wild animals can or cannot live in our cities and suburbs and how we can create and manage urban habitat and populations for more biodiverse urban areas. My research ranges from understanding how females and males are differently affected by urbanization to understanding how the stress of urban living causes animals to evolve. Check out my research, community engagement, and media highlights. Find me on Twitter or send me an email to learn more!
NEWS
*25 October, 2021* What shapes sex ratios in metamorphosing tadpoles? It turns out both sex-biased mortality and sex reversal work at the same time. The last chapter of my dissertation is published and documents, for the first time, sex-biased mortality in wild larval amphibians. Building on our prior research, we also provide further evidence that sex reversal is natural in amphibians, and not necessarily due to pollution.
*22 October, 2021* Unfortunately, California’s imperiled Western Pond Turtles have a new pathogen and disease. We published our discovery of the ‘shell devouring’ fungus in California and it’s odd association with shell disease.
*01 August, 2021* Databases are critical for organizing biodiversity information. The AmphibiaWeb and Reptile Database published insights from a quarter century of amphibian and reptile database.
*17 December, 2020* Do species really adaptive evolve to live in cities? Read our latest synthesis in TREE where we critically assess the evidence for urban adaptation. What a pleasure to work with and learn from Kristien Brans, Simone Des Roches, Colin Donihue, and Sarah Diamond on this work!
*13 August, 2020* Systemic racism and classism are powerful forces shaping cities. Social inequality has dramatic impacts on diverse human communities but also shapes urban biodiversity and ecosystems. Our new paper in Science synthesizes the links between racism and other forms of social inequality with ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation in cities. Wonderful to lead this paper with Chris Schell and the amazing team of Karen Dyson, Tracy Fuentes, Simone Des Roches, Nyeema Harris, Danica Miller, and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine.
*11 May, 2020* Species are evolving to live in our cities. Does this matter for urban biodiversity conservation and management? Colin Donihue and I discuss this in a new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
*20 March, 2020* Read this reanalysis and comment in Science by my colleagues and myself. We show that a study in 2019 by Scheele et al. cannot be reproduced due to a large dearth of data. The Scheele et al. study claimed >500 amphibian species declined (with 90 going extinct) due to the amphibian chytrid fungus. Our reanalysis shows the paper by Scheele et al. is harmful to conservation and our fundamental understanding of amphibian disease. Also see this Dynamic Ecology post inspired by our Comment and which highlights the harm done to science and conservation when rebuttals do not address the critiques of original studies.
lambertmr.wordpress.com 