My love of nature inspired me to obtain my B.S. in Wildlife Ecology, with a concentration in conservation biology, at the University of Maine. My journey as an ecologist continued into my Master’s, with my mentor Kathryn E. Perez. I received a Biology M.S., with a focus in terrestrial invertebrate and urban biology, from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. My interest in ecology culminated in a Biology Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, with a focus in evolutionary ecology. I was co-mentored by Dr. Maurine Neiman (University of Iowa) and Dr. Amy Krist (University of Wyoming).
My research areas are polyploidy, environmental stressors, and population dynamics. I am an ecologist that is seeking to understand how polyploidy, environmental stressors and human-driven environmental disturbances influences the evolution of invertebrates and plants. During my master’s, I researched how population dynamics of terrestrial invertebrates differ across an environmental disturbance gradient and if human-maintained environments can provide refugia to terrestrial snails. In my Ph.D., I investigated how nutrient limitation affects phenotypic traits and reproductive investment across polyploidy and how insensitivity to population density could aid in invasion success. In my post doc, I am evaluating if conspecifics of differing ploidy levels are coexisting or competitively exclusive and how ploidy level may affect trait-size relationships from the molecular to population level.
If you are interested in my research and want details, please check out the links below or contact me via email (briante-najev@pitt.edu).
Briante Najev personal website