I am a post-doctoral fellow working on a project covering forest fragmentation in Connecticut.(Photo courtesy of writer)
“I am a post-doctoral fellow working on a project covering forest fragmentation in Connecticut. Fragmenting our forests changes food webs in ways that might be unpredictable. Instead of a big, giant forest like Connecticut used to be, it’s a bunch of little, tiny forests, like little islands between our human-dominated urbanization. Species can’t move between them, and they can’t support as many species. Forests do a lot of ecosystem services, so understanding how we can co-exist with them is very important.”
“How did you get into botany?”
“I’ve always been a botanist since I was a college student. I thought I was gonna be a chemistry major, but then I went into chemistry classes, and they were very boring. I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll try biology.” I ended up working for a plant ecologist when I was an undergrad, and the rest is history.”
Marlese Lessing is the news editor for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at marlese.lessing@uconn.edu. She tweets @marlese_lessing.