Principal investigator

Toni Lyn Morelli, PhD.
RESEARCH ECOLOGIST, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Toni Lyn Morelli grew up outside of Detroit surrounded by her Italian immigrant relatives.  She followed her love of animals to earn a B.S. in Zoology at Michigan State University (Go Spartans!) and her love of African mammals to earn a PhD in Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University. After her PhD, Toni Lyn obtained a National Science Foundation Bioinformatics Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley, exploring range shifts in the Sierra Nevada. She has also worked for the U.S. Forest Service, both as a research ecologist at the Pacific Southwest Research Station and as the Technical Advisor to the Democratic Republic of Congo in Kinshasa. In her current role as USGS Research Ecologist for the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, Toni Lyn collaborates with students, postdoctoral fellows, and other researchers using translational ecology, fieldwork, geospatial analysis, species distribution modeling, occupancy modeling, genetics, and decision science to facilitate natural resource management and habitat and species conservation in the face of climate and land use change.  Currently, her most active areas of focus are climate change refugia, species range shifts, and invasive species.

Current Lab Members
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Graduate Students

David Farris (He/him)

David is a PhD student whose current research interest is how avian behavior is affected by climate change. He was born and raised in New York and is an alumni of the EEB program at UCONN (B.S., 2013) and the Biology program at Sam Houston in Texas (M.S.,2022). During his break between undergraduate and graduate, he worked as a seasonal biologist focused on avian conservation. His Master’s thesis research examined if habitat and nest box temperature and humidity affected Carolina Wren parental care behavior and nesting success.

Heather Siart (She/Her)

Heather is a PhD student whose research interests focus on the effects of climate change and human impact on insects specifically lepidoptera. she is studying the effects of climate change on the endemic White Mountain fritillary. Her research partners with New Hampshire Fish and Game which  allows her to participate in translational ecology, citizen science, and science education. 
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MADELEINE A. RUBENSTEIN

Madeleine is a PhD student studying the intersection of terrestrial ecosystems, climate change, and decision analysis. Her work focuses on how climate change affects natural resources and natural resource management, and uses decision analysis to improve management. She is also the National Science Lead with the US Geological Survey’s National Climate Adaptation Center, where she studies the impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems. Her work focuses on identifying management-relevant research priorities relating to wildlife and ecosystem response to climate change, and conducting national-scale synthesis assessments. Before joining USGS, she earned a Master of Environmental Science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she studied ecosystem ecology.

John Paul Williams-Soriano
Visiting Graduate Research Intern

John Paul Williams-Soriano is a PhD candidate in Dr. Ben Dantzer’s lab at the University of Michigan where he is primarily interested in understanding how animals and plants respond to environmental change. His dissertation is focused on how plant defense compounds mediate ecological relationships with mammals in collaboration with the Kluane Red Squirrel Project. John Paul is also interested in applying climate decision-making frameworks to invasive species management in the Midwest and Northeast United States.

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWS

Uzma Ashraf, phd
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in the Wild Energy Initiative - Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Ashraf is co-advised by Rebecca Hernandez, Toni Lyn Morelli and Adam B. Smith. Dr. Ashraf is an expert in species distribution modeling and a postdoctoral scholar funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in the Wild Energy Initiative. In this role, she studies the intersection between the conservation of wildlife and renewable energy development across the United States and identifies modalities of environmental justice in the planning process. Dr. Ashraf conducts research on wildlife conservation with climate change and sustainability science.
Contact Dr. Ashraf: [email protected]

NIKKI CAVALIERI, PHD.
oak ridge institute for science and education (ORISE) postdoctoral research fellow

Nikki's research interests are conservation, biogeography, and life-history evolution. Her current research combines conservation and biogeography to identify areas that will be less impacted or more resilient to climate change- climate change refugia. This work will highlight areas for prioritizing conservation actions and help conservation managers make better water and land use decisions to help wildlife adapt to a changing climate.
PROJECT - CLIMATE-SMART CONSERVATION FOR TANZANIA: MAPPING CLIMATE CHANGE REFUGIA FOR PRIORITY RESOURCES

Zalmai Moheb, PHD.

Zalmai Moheb started his career in the field of wildlife conservation in 2006 and later he received a master’s degree in wildlife science from India in 2009. Zalmai received a Ph.D. Scholarship from Fulbright in 2015 and he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA in 2020. His Ph.D. research focused on snow leopard-human conflict in Wakhan National Park in northeastern Afghanistan. Zalmai has worked in the field of wildlife conservation both in the field and office-based positions for nearly two decades. He used to work as the Conservation and Science Director for the Wildlife Conservation Society Afghanistan Program before he returned to UMass Amherst in October 2024. Zalmai currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UMass Amherst. Zalmai is interested in wildlife and nature conservation, with a focus of human wildlife conflict in the face of climate change in the Northeastern United States.

KATJA RÖNKÄ, PHD (she/her)

Katja is a postdoc funded by the Research Council of Finland to study the importance of biotic interactions in delineating species ranges. She has worked in two Finnish universities in Helsinki and Jyväskylä and the Finnish museum of natural history LUOMUS, mainly with butterflies and moths and more recently birds. The overarching theme of her various interests ranging from individual behavior to biogeography and genomics to content-wide field experiments lies in species interactions, and understanding how biodiversity is maintained and originated in the wild. Her current project expands knowledge of a model system of reed warblers and brood parasites to territorial competitors across their European breeding range to test theory of range limits and the relative importance of biotic vs. abiotic variables driving local population demographics.

Sarah jayne love, PHD (she/her)

Sarah is an ORISE postdoctoral fellow with USGS NE CASC and UMass Amherst. In her PhD, she helped to develop the Sky Island–Mountain Chain comparison as a climate relict natural laboratory, leveraging their long-term exposure to contrasting climate conditions to study tree and soil microbial adaptation to climate change. She is currently collaborating across federal agencies to support decision-making in the implementation of climate adaptation frameworks.

In her free time, she can be found outside. :-)

Connect with Sarah: [email protected]

Research interns

wildthings alumni
​Current position​

PhD/ms Students

cathleen balantic, phd

Acoustic Biologist - Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, National Parks Service

Jerilyn Calaor, phd

Jahiya Clark

PhD Student - UC Santa Cruz

Kadambari Devarajan, phd.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow - University of Rhode Island

joe drake, phd.

Postdoctoral Researcher  - Virginia Tech

Donovan Drummey

US Fish and Wildlife Service

nigel golden, phd.

Postdoctoral Researcher - Woodwell Climate Research Center

Antarius Jackson

MS - University of Massachusetts Amherst

emily levy

PhD Student - Duke University

Arielle Xiaofen Liu

PhD Student - University of Arizona

ayodele o'uhuru

 PhD Student - University of Massachusetts, USFWS Pathways Student Intern

benjamin padilla, phd.

​Wildlife Research Supervisor -
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

tatjana washington

 PhD Student -  University of Chicago 

dana williams

Research Assistant - University of California, Los Angeles

Sara wisner

Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation

allison young

Food & Drug Administration

Sarah Weiskopf, phd

Research Ecologist, US Geological Survey

Joseph Riedl

Maggie Sawdy, PHD

Michigan State University

alexej siren, phd

Research Ecologist, University of New Hampshire

Undergraduate interns

Vera Bobskill

Undergraduate Student - UMass Amherst

Giancarlo Ceja

Undergraduate Student - University of Southern California

Yancy Chandler

Environmental Protection Specialist

Zoe Chen

UCLA

Ester Fonseca

Undergraduate Student - UMass Amherst

​Melissa Hua

UCLA

Wren (Luna) Jordan-West

Bryanna Lewis

Undergraduate Student - Oregon State University

Gabriela Logo

Undergraduate Student - Florida International University

Alyssa (Ali) Luchs

Kamaria McCrary

Melissa Mora-Gonzalez

​UC Berkeley

Bhawana paudel 

Research Assistant, University of Colorado Anschutz

JUAN PLASCENCIA

UCLA

Fatima Quiroz

Undergraduate student - 

Olivia Ramlatchan

Old dominion university

Sofia Safa ​

​Georgetown University

Jamie Stoll

Graduate Student  - University of Massachusetts

Adrian Lee Susanto

DOMINIQUE THOMAS

Sustainability Manager

Asa Tuke

Nina zhao 

Masters Graduate - Boston University

Postdoc fellows

tina mozelewski, phd.

Lead Scientist- Conservation Science Partners

Annette evans, phd.

Assistant Professor, University of Saint Joseph

Eva colberg, phd.

RISCC Coordinator

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