Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina I moved to Mars Hill in 2007 where I got a B.S. in Biology from Mars Hill College. I then moved to Johnson City, Tennessee where I got a M.S. in Geosciences with a concentration in Paleontology from East Tennessee State University. During the summers I worked in the pit at the Gray Fossil Site and during the school year I taught Intro to Physical Geology Lab and Life Through Time Lab as a TA. My thesis was on the shrew fauna of the Gray Fossil Site and my side project was an overview of the insects. The fossil site, just 15 minutes from Johnson City, is Late Miocene (Hemphilian) which is 4.5 to 7 million years old.
Currently I am living in Asheville, North Carolina working on bringing awareness of the detrimental nature of invasive plants and rebuilding native plant communities.
People often wonder why I study things so small and seemingly unimportant, one reason that really interests me is: a single dung pat mirrors an entire ecosystem. Take the familiar African savanna... hear me out... there are the large predators, the lions and leopards of the pat, the clown beetles (Histeridae); these eat fly larvae, gastrointestinal nematodes and other beetle's larvae. Then there are the large grazers like Onthophagus taurus (if you want a little laugh look up the etymology of that one). The elephant equivalent would be Deltochilum or Geotrupes. Dung pats even have a small herbivorous mammal analogue, Aphodius, eating the smallest of particulates.
The same concept holds true with shrews. Currently if you live in the Southern Appalachian region or the Northwestern U.S. there are around 9 species of shrews just below your feet, elsewhere in the U.S. (with a couple of exceptions) no less than 5 and yet very few people have seen or even heard of shrews. It's these prominent but unnoticed taxa that will teach us the most about our past, present and future environment.
Photos on this page by Steven Wallace and Steve Jasinski
Currently I am living in Asheville, North Carolina working on bringing awareness of the detrimental nature of invasive plants and rebuilding native plant communities.
People often wonder why I study things so small and seemingly unimportant, one reason that really interests me is: a single dung pat mirrors an entire ecosystem. Take the familiar African savanna... hear me out... there are the large predators, the lions and leopards of the pat, the clown beetles (Histeridae); these eat fly larvae, gastrointestinal nematodes and other beetle's larvae. Then there are the large grazers like Onthophagus taurus (if you want a little laugh look up the etymology of that one). The elephant equivalent would be Deltochilum or Geotrupes. Dung pats even have a small herbivorous mammal analogue, Aphodius, eating the smallest of particulates.
The same concept holds true with shrews. Currently if you live in the Southern Appalachian region or the Northwestern U.S. there are around 9 species of shrews just below your feet, elsewhere in the U.S. (with a couple of exceptions) no less than 5 and yet very few people have seen or even heard of shrews. It's these prominent but unnoticed taxa that will teach us the most about our past, present and future environment.
Photos on this page by Steven Wallace and Steve Jasinski