1. What do you study related to biodiversity (what are your research questions, what organisms do you work on)?
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 My research focuses on why certain animals go extinct locally while others are able to survive after habitat fragmentation. I am particularly interested in the role of behavioral plasticity (the amount of flexibility in behavior as determined by constraints developed through the course of an animal's evolution) in predicting extinction proclivity.
I also seek to tie together biogeographic patterns with local level behavioral and ecological processes as moderated by evolution. I tested these ideas on lemuriformes in fragmented habitats in southeastern Madagascar. My collaborators and I are now looking for a genetic basis for behavioral plasticity. This research intimately relates to the loss of biodiversity that occurs after habitat fragmentation and degradation. It is also seeking to describe the mid-altitude southeastern rainforests in Madagascar, and to predict the ability of forests to regenerate their diversity after they have been cut.
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2. How do you study biodiversity (for example, what technological tools and methodologies do you use in your research)?
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My research intimately relates patterns of biodiversity loss on a biogeographic level as monitored through geographic information systems and remote sensing with local level ecology and behavioral data that are monitored through geographic position systems and radiocollaring. We use geographic information systems to integrate data at a wide variety of spatial scales for meta-analysis on extinction proclivity. We also hope to use tools of mathematical analysis and modeling to better understand the interactions between behaviors and biogeographic patterns.
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3. Where do you study biodiversity?
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Southeastern mid-altitude rainforests in Madagascar.
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4. How might your research have implications for biological conservation?
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The purpose of my research is to improve understanding of extinction and is therefore intimately related to goals of conservation.
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5. How did you become interested in science? What made you want to be a scientist, and how did you get to The Field Museum?
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My interests in science resulted from a long-standing concern about extinction from an early age, perhaps 6-7 years old. The opportunity to study with my advisor, Dr. Bruce Patterson, the MacArthur Curator of Mammals, and the other excellent scientists at the Museum, allowed me to accomplish these dreams. Dr. Patterson's work on nested subsets and biogeographic patterns in general provided the inspiration for my own work on understanding the "behavior of extinction".
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6. Describe important collaborations for your scientific endeavors (describe your work with other researchers, organizations, or scientific groups, local or indigenous peoples, etc.)
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At present, I am working on setting up the Center for Extinction Research. This Center is currently sponsoring an international symposium on extinction—The Ecology and Evolution of Extinction: Patterns, Processes, and Predictions—that will occur at the Society for Conservation Biology meetings in New York in the summer of 2004. My colleagues, Rebecca Rundell and Bruce Patterson, also hope to edit a symposium volume from this meeting of the same title. I also have an existing collaboration with Kellie Heckman of Yale University on investigating the potential underlying genetic basis for behavioral plasticity.
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