Brittany S. Barker

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of Biology, University of New Mexico

E-mail:  barkerbr@unm.edu  Phone: (505) 205-4251; FAX:  (505) 277-0304

 

 

 

BB_F_056.jpgBiosketch

I’m from Oregon, and attended Oregon State University, where I worked in Steve Arnold’s lab and completed a B.S. in Zoology in 2003. I joined Joe Cook’s lab (co-advised by Bob Waide) at the University of New Mexico and am currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biology.

 

 

e-mail me

 

 

Curriculum Vitae

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research Interests

*  Phylogeography and landscape genetics of terrestrial vertebrates

*  Evolution, conservation biology and biogeography of tropical island communities

*  Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and ecological niche modeling

*  Comparative population genetics of invasive and endemic species

*  Conservation biology

*  Quantitative genetics

 

 

Current Position

*  Ph.D. candidate, Department of Biology, The University of New Mexico, USA. Co-advised by Profs. Joe Cook and Bob Waide.

*  Teaching Assistant for BIOL 352L, Microbiology Laboratory

 

 

Past Positions

*  Teaching Assistant for BIOL 451, Microbial Ecology

*  Teaching Assistant for BIOL 386L, General Vertebrate Zoology laboratory. * CLICK HERE for my lab course materials.

*  NSF GK-12 Fellow in 7th grade Life Sciences at Belen Middle School, Belen, New Mexico

* CLICK HERE for a subset of my lesson plans designed for 7th and 8th grade students

*  Research Assistant, Robert B. Waide, University of New Mexico

*  Laboratory Technician, Thomas B. Smith, University of California, Los Angeles

*  Wildlife Biologist, Swaim Biological Consulting, Livermore, California

*  Laboratory Technician and Field Assistant, Stevan J. Arnold, Oregon State University, Corvallis

 

 

Other Links

NSF GK-12 Program at UNM

Cook Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab, UNM, USA

Species Distribution Modeling Methods for Conservation Biologists

UNM Department of Biology

LTER Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico GAP Analysis Project

Museum of Southwestern Biology, UNM, USA

 

 

Dissertation ResearchVIS

The ecological requirements of species largely determine what geologic, climatic and environmental factors constitute barriers to gene flow, and ultimately play a role in divergence. There is remarkably little known, however, about the interplay of historical events and ecological requirements driving intra-specific diversification within tropical island systems. I am investigating how populations of the codistributed but ecologically unique frog species, the Mountain coquí (Eleutherodactylus portoricensis) and the Red-eyed coquí (E. antillensis), have diverged in response to a series of shared climatic and geologic events on the Puerto Rican Bank in the Caribbean.  I am testing explicit models of population divergence, based on current and historical ecological niche models of this tropical island system, using coalescent and population genetic analyses of multiple DNA loci.

Frog_palscute mtn coqui.jpg