People
Dr. Brett Scheffers
Principal Investigator
Scheffers joined the University of Florida in 2015 and is a member of the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Department (WEC).
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He is a naturalist at heart. Brett loves bird, fish, and frog watching and spends much time trying to find excuses to study them. He enjoys thinking creatively about science - after all why can't a square peg fit into a round hole?
While in the rainforests, Scheffers enjoys climbing trees to study arboreal animal communities in Southeast Asia, the Neotropics, and Madagascar.
His research encompasses the broad topic of global change biology to include how climate change, habitat loss, and the trade of wildlife impacts communities of plants and animals.
PhD Student, University of Florida
Lydia joined the Scheffers lab in fall 2022. She examines how fine-scale spatial and temporal climatic variation influences biogeographic patterns from local to global scales using a combination of field work and big data approaches.
Cayla Morningstar, Southeast RISCC Coordinator
Cayla Morningstar is the newly appointed research coordinator of Southeast RISCC. She is an aquatic biologist specializing in the biogeography of mollusks and has worked with snails and mussels across the U.S., extensively in the southeast. Her research focuses on invasive species risk and has included horizon scanning and impact characterization. Before starting as the coordinator of Southeast RISCC, she was a member of the leadership team in her role as an aquatic invasive species biologist with the Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) database in Gainesville, Florida. She received her bachelor's degrees in Zoology and Philosophy from Miami University and is pursuing her masters in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences at the University of Florida.
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You can reach out to Cayla directly for questions, collaborations, and anything you might need!
Jan Lenc
PhD student, University Florida
Jan joined the Scheffers Lab as a PhD student in 2024. He investigates how global environmental change through urbanization, climate warming, and habitat disturbance influences the ecology and resilience of ectothermic species. Combining fieldwork, experimental approaches, and mechanistic modeling, his research explores how species respond and adapt to shifting thermal environments across space and time.
Dr. Austin M. Smith
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Florida
Dr. Austin Smith is a quantitative ecologist and postdoctoral researcher in the Scheffers Lab at the University of Florida, where he began his appointment in June 2025. He is also a member the 2025-27 USGS Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral (CAP) fellows cohort.
Austin recently completed his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida. He also holds a B.A. in Mathematics (2013) and an M.S. in Interdisciplinary Ecology (2018), both from the University of Florida.
His research applies mathematical and statistical tools to ecological questions, with a particular focus on how environmental variability shapes species distributions across space and time. He is especially interested in the use of advanced computational methods to improve ecological forecasting, as well as in understanding the drivers of introduced species success and the dynamics of non-native populations.
In his current postdoctoral work, Austin is developing a dynamic, data-driven framework to assess and manage climate-induced species range shifts. This research, conducted in partnership with the USGS Climate Adaptation Science Center, integrates advanced modeling, multi-source data synthesis, and stakeholder engagement. His work centers on four core objectives: identifying priority regions for research and management, distinguishing true range shifts from natural variability, validating predictive models with on-the-ground data, and supporting climate-informed decision-making through collaborative workshops.
Sibley
Lab mascot and birding expert
Sibley joined the lab in 2019 after being saved from the local animal shelter. As his name suggests, he enjoys chasing birds and he is compiling quite a list.
Former Lab Members
Jesse Borden
Ms Student (now Post-doctoral Researcher, Columbia University)
Rebecca Senior
Visiting Post-doc (now Assistant Professor, Durham University)
Brunno Oliveira
Post-doc (now Post-doc, UC Davis)
Farwah Sharif
Ms Student
Xuang Xing
PhD Student (now post-doc with LifeWebs.net)
Dr. Yiming Hu
Visiting Post-doc (now Post-Doc, Southern University of Science and Technology)
Dr. Luke Evans
Post-doctoral Researcher
Alex Baecher
PhD Student
Dave Klinges
PhD Student
Sebastian Mena
Ms Student
Sierra Scauzillo
Undergraduate Student
Dr. Cindy Cosset
Post-doctoral Fellow
Close Collaborators
David is a Professor of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield. His research is primarily focussed on determining the impacts of selective logging and oil palm on biodiversity, and he identified the critical conservation value of logged tropical forests. He received my Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia, UK, in 2005, where he studied why mutualistic interactions persist despite the potential for partners to defect as a cheater, using ant-plant mutualisms in Amazonian Peru as my model system. He retains an interest in the maintenance of mutualism and whether tropical land-use change will disrupt the benefits traded between species.
Noel Rowe
Noel Rowe is the founder of Primate Conservation Inc. Noel manages a natural reserve in Panama, and has been provided access to this property to the Scheffers Lab. Ed Basham has conducted his research at this site in Sierra Llorona, Panama, with great results.
Pat is a tropical biologist, conservationist and primatologist. Her broad interests include biodiversity assessments, conservation biology, population ecology and genetics, and primate hibernation. She is also interested in exploration of new sites and the discovery and documentation of new species. This has led her to carry out field research in Peru, Paraguay, Borneo, East Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Madagascar.
Steve started the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change research (CTBCC) in 2006 and was the inaugural Director for six years. His research is focused on understanding biodiversity, assessing the vulnerability of biodiversity to global climate change and using this knowledge to maximise the positive benefits of conservation management and adaptation. His research was one of the first to identify global climate change as a severe threatening process in the tropics and that we may be facing many species extinctions in mountain systems around the world.
Dr. Najot Sodhi (1962 - 2011)
Navjot seeks to understand how human activities modify the planet and in return how human societies suffer the consequences. His research projects include studies of extinctions, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services, and are not restricted to any particular taxon. Navjot also aims to apply his research towards capacity building in developing countries in the tropics. This he does (and hopes to do) through writing textbooks that can be accessed for free and giving voice in conservation science to the ignored (e.g. women and tropical biologists).
Luke is a conservation biologist from California now living in China. His research is centered in Asia, where he has been working since 2005 and which hosts the highest levels of endemism and the largest human populations. He studies fragmentation, green energy development, and wildlife trade, identifying the scenarios under which biodiversity suffers - or, in some cases, thrives - from such enterprises. He received his PhD from the National University of Singapore.
Bert has a long-standing interest in the ecology and conservation of forests and grasslands in the eastern United States.After attaining his B.S., Bert completed a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Bert is a Research Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of Environmental Science at American University and an Affiliate Professor in the Environmental Science and Policy Department at George Mason University. At Clifton, Bert oversees all of the organization’s activities, with a focus on restoration. He is passionate about documenting the thousands of species that occur at Clifton (see our iNaturalist project) and sharing the wonder of their life histories with the local community.
Jonathan is a researcher in Ecology & Biostatistics broadly interested in the ecological dynamics associated with spatial and temporal global changes, with particular emphasis on the biotic responses to contemporary climate change. His research interests range from broad-scale patterns of biodiversity and long-term changes in species distribution to finer-scale and shorter-term changes in community composition.
William Laurance is a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, and holds an Australian Laureate Fellowship, one of Australia’s highest scientific awards. He also holds the Prince Bernhard Chair in International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University, Netherlands.Â
Laurance received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. His research focuses on the impacts of intensive land-uses, such as habitat fragmentation, logging, hunting and wildfires, on tropical forests and their biodiversity. He is also interested in protected areas, climatic change, the impacts of roads and other infrastructure on biodiversity, and conservation policy. His research over the past 35 years spans the tropical world, including the Amazon, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions. To date he has published eight books and over 400 scientific and popular articles.
Dr. Lalatiana Randriamiharisoa
Lalatiana is a biologist, ornithologist, ecologist and conservationist with research focus on improving and streamlining the biodiversity data collection (Bird, Mammals, Amphibians et Reptiles) and integrating a climate-monitoring program at MNP. This research collaborates with local communities and offers for them the opportunity to participate in the management and protection of their local PAs.
Gecica Yogo
(Ms Student)
Pauline Dufour
Ms Student
Lydou Andriamahohatra
Ms Student
Dr. Edmund Basham
Former PhD Student (Now a field scientist conducting additional vertical amphibian surveys in Gabon)
Dr. Xiaoli Fan
Visiting Researcher (now Senior Experimenter, Department of Ecology and Biological Resource at Lishui University, China)