RESEARCH INTERESTS

I investigate environmental changes in the geologic and historic past, and the extent to which they have affected evolution and paleobiogeography, including changes in evolutionary rates, communities, and organismal morphology. The originations and extinctions of fossil taxa and their ecology/paleoecology are used to identify evolutionary, paleoceanographic, paleoclimatic and tectonic trends through time. The main current research projects are listed below.

 

PANAMA PALEONTOLOGY PROJECT, the web site for a long-term, multinational research project

NEOGENE EVOLUTION OF TROPICAL AMERICAN BENTHIC FORAMINIFERA

The Neogene emergence of the Isthmus of Panama separated tropical Eastern Pacific and Western Atlantic waters and biotas. Assemblages of benthic foraminifera collected during fieldwork in Central America and South America are being compared within a new stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental framework to assess the biogeographic and evolutionary changes in tropical American Neogene benthic foraminifera.

UPLIFT OF THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA

I am using the stable isotopes of foraminifera from land-based geologic sections, as established by Collins et al. (2016), to identify paleoceanographic changes associated with tectonism that caused the Miocene to early Pliocene emergence of the Isthmus of Panama. 

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES IN FLORIDA BAY AND THE EVERGLADES

Florida Bay is part of the environmentally challenged Everglades National Park. Current research on Florida Bay builds on the previously published research (Cheng et al. 2012, Collins et al. 2019) with a mathematical analysis of the influence of naturally occurring vs. anthropogenic events on water quality. Everglades research, conducted with former doctoral student Z. Verlaak (Verlaak et al. 2019) uses the ecology of modern foraminifera to interpret the last 4000 history of variable rates of sea-level rise.