Brittany S. Barker
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Biology,
E-mail: barkerbr@unm.edu Phone: (505) 205-4251; FAX: (505) 277-0304
Biosketch
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.
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,
Wildlife
Biologist, Swaim
Biological Consulting,
Laboratory
Technician and Field Assistant, Stevan J. Arnold,
Other Links
Cook Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab, UNM, USA
Species
Distribution Modeling Methods for Conservation Biologists
LTER Luquillo
Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico GAP Analysis Project
Museum
of Southwestern Biology, UNM, USA
Dissertation
Research
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
