I have always been fascinated with the natural world, specifically how each element in a system is interconnected and affecting one part can create consequences elsewhere in the web. As a passionate environmentalist, a huge influence in my interest in ecology has stemmed from wanting to understand how climate change and anthropogenic landscape change has been and will continue to effect natural communities. During my undergraduate studies I performed a research project on the presence of brook trout populations. My goal was to determine a specific set of environmental factors that could be used to predict the presence, or absence, of a population. Moving forward I will be looking at the functional diversity of dispersal traits in marine communities off the Atlantic coast, to determine how variation in dispersal rates effects community stability and resilience the face of climate change.