Life in the City is a collaborative blog launched in 2018 by Kristin Winchell, Elizabeth Carlen, and Lindsay Miles. We saw a need for a common place for researchers worldwide to share and discuss urban research. We envision this blog as a community effort and welcome contributors at all levels of expertise — we have undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, and professors who all contribute to this community. Since 2018 we have grown to include Kevin Aviles-Rodriguez and Olivia Weklar as editors, and have welcomed contributors from around the world!
Our Editors:
Olivia Weklar is a PhD student at New York University in the Winchell Lab. She is interested in studying the impacts of urbanization on the birds of New York City! In her research, Olivia aims to understand how common city species are dealing with novel urban pressures and how we can ethically guide urban expansion to conserve our remaining natural spaces and enhance biodiversity.
Kevin Avilés-Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor at Johnson and Wales University. His research incorporates genomics, ecology, behavior, and morphology to understand how hurricanes, urbanization, invasive species, and more impact reptiles. His dissertation research focused on the interaction of global change drivers on the ecology and evolution of Anolis lizards. His postdoctoral research was on the native and invasive species of freshwater turtles found in urban landscapes of Puerto Rico. You can learn more about his research on his website.
Our Founders:
Kristin Winchell is an Assistant Professor at New York University. Her research focuses on ecological and evolutionary consequences of urbanization across diverse groups of organisms, with a focus on Anolis lizards. This group of tropical lizards has a remarkable ability to rapidly adapt to changes in the environment, and many species thrive in urban areas. Her lab researches urban evolutionary ecology across diverse taxa. Kristin’s lab at NYU combines ecology, phenotypic variation, and genomics to build an integrative picture of evolution in the Anthropocene in organisms ranging from invertebrates to birds, amphibians, and lizards. You can learn more about her research on her website.
Elizabeth Carlen is a former National Science Foundation and a current Living Earth Collaborative postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis working with Dr. Jonathan Losos. Her postdoctoral research focuses on the impacts of urbanization and environmental racism in Eastern Gray Squirrels. Previously, she worked on the effects of feral pigeons in the Northeastern Megacity. You can learn more about her and her research on her website.
Lindsay Miles is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Warren Booth’s Lab at Virtginia Tech. She is interested in urban evolution and ecology and is currently working on bed bug genomics. She has previously worked with the Western black widow spider (Latrodectus hesperus) across is geographic range in the Western United States and found in her dissertation work, at Virginia Commonwealth University, that urbanization facilitates gene flow and can change patterns of gene expression between urban and non-urban spiders. You can learn more about her on her website.
Life in the City Hall of Fame: Top 5 Contributors
[authors_list columns=1 amount=5 show_count=”yes” orderby=”post_count” order=”DESC” avatar_size=250 roles=”Contributor”]All Life in the City Contributors:
This could be you too! We welcome guest and regular contributors from all levels of expertise. Contact Kristin to find out more about how you can contribute!
[authors_list columns=2 show_count=”yes” orderby=”last_name” order=”ASC” avatar_size=150 roles=”Contributor”]