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I am an ecologist interested in the factors that influence species’ geographic range limits. I completed my PhD in the University of Minnesota’s graduate program in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior in Dr. Ken Kozak’s lab. Following my PhD, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Central Florida working with Drs. Betsy Von Holle and John Weishampel, where I developed novel modeling approaches to address variation in sea turtle nesting ecology utilizing nest survey data, NASA and NOAA environmental layers, and human land use data, while also forecasting changes to sea level, storm surges, and climate.
My research focuses on the mechanisms driving species distributions and how these distributions shift over time. I use a combination of population genetics, eco-physiology, morphometrics, behavior, and ecological modeling to examine how ecological and evolutionary processes interact and vary across a species’ geographic range. I am particularly interested in how knowledge of these mechanisms can be used to inform methods for forecasting geographic range shifts under anthropogenic global change. I have studied species distributions in many different systems including black bears, evening primrose flowers, lemurs, and freshwater mussels. My graduate research focused on montane species of lungless salamanders belonging to the genus Plethodon and my postdoctoral work addressed questions relating to nesting distributions for species of sea turtle in the eastern US. Learn more about my research
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Marta Polasky Lyons, PhD
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