People
Dr. Lindsey Bruckerhoff
Assistant Professor
Co-director Aquatic Ecology Lab
Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology
The Ohio State University
Links
Current Lab Members
Meredith received her BS and MS in Environmental Science from Duquesne University. Meredith has a passion for scientific communication and served as an Editor in Chief for a science blog while completing her undergraduate and master's research on using eDNA to detect freshwater mussels. Her dissertation research is focused on intermittent streams, specifically predicting patterns of stream drying, linking magnitude of intermittency to stream fish community structure, and assessing ecosystem responses to drying. Meredith's research is conducted at broad spatial scales- she is quantifying linkages among drying and stream ecosystems across multiple drainage basins.
Megan Herbruck (MS)
Megan received her BA in Biology from Colgate University and has professional work experience with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Megan's research focuses on the interaction between temperature and other drivers of fish distributions across river networks with spatial heterogeneity in thermal regimes. She is interested in the role of temperature in driving the outcome of species interactions. Her research is conducted at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a unique recovering ecosystem in the Lake Erie drain basin.
Elizabeth Duskey (Post-doctoral Researcher)
Liz received her Ph.D from Cornell University where she developed novel Bayesian statistical methods to describe and predict habitat use, abundance, and movement of commercially important species of fish. Liz has broad experiences developing and applying custom statistical models to answer ecological questions related to the interactive impacts of harvest and environmental conditions on commercially important species, climate change impacts on rare species of conservation concern, trophic interactions and community level responses to global change, and population regulation. Join her to learn apply applying math to ecological questions during her weekly "Math Snacks"!
Andrew Miller (Post-doctoral Researcher)
Andy received his Ph.D in Natural Resource Ecology and Management from Oklahoma State University in 2019 after receiving a MS from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a BS from Ursinus College. Andy's research focuses on movement and population ecology of freshwater fishes. He is currently synthesizing demographic information about Smallmouth Bass to populations across their native and non-native ranges to prediction population and invasion dynamics at broad spatial scales.
Madeline Schumacher (MS)
Madeline received a BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology from the University of Vermont and has professional experiences working with the Missouri Department of Conservation. Madeline's MS research is focused on identifying drivers of rare darter occurrences at multiple spatial scales. This work is being conducted in the Ouachita Highlands of Arkansas, which is home to several endemic darters of conservation concern, including the Beaded Darter. Identified drivers of occupancy will be combined with drivers of population genetic structure to inform the conservation of rare fishes in this unique ecoregion.
Abigail Shake (MS)
Abigail received a BA in Biology from the University of Mississippi and worked as a field technician for the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science. There, Abigail become interested in freshwater mussel diversity and conservation. Abigail's MS project strives to identify drivers of non-insect invertebrate occupancy and community structure, including lentic mussels and lotic snails. We are specifically interested in linking inundation regimes of off-channel habitats, including oxbow lakes and wetlands, to the occurrence of mussels of conservation concern in Kansas. In addition to informing the conservation of species of conservation concern, this project will be one of few assessing drivers of community composition of lentic mussels at a landscape scale.
Vanessa Rendon (BS)
Vanessa had an early passion for STEM disciplines through her interest in engineering and curiosity of the natural world. Vanessa joined the lab as a Freshman Research Scholar and her independent undergraduate research project is focused on understanding how crayfish communities respond to stream drying across an annual water cycle. Her research links crayfish traits, like burrowing behavior, to occurrence and density of crayfishes across a gradient of intermittency. Vanessa is excited to continue her work as a Wentz Scholar at Oklahoma State University.
Michael Begines (BS)
Michael is a zoology major in EEOB. Michael is helping out on several research projects focused on rare darters in the Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Michael is helping to understand drivers of Leopard Darter population fluctuations and reproductive phenology of darters in the E. stigmaeum complex of Arkansas.
Former Lab Members
Ben Kelly (MS)
Ben completed his MS focused on intermittent stream ecology. He currently works as a fish biologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Fairbanks, AK.
Jamie Eastep (BS)
Jamie conducted research on niche breadth variation in Green Sunfish across body size and stream size gradients. He is currently pursuing a MS degree in Entomology.
Join the lab!
Learn more on the Opportunities page and send me an email at bruckerhoff.2@osu.edu