Evan A. Fiorenza

Phd Candidate, University of California, Irvine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Advised by Celia Symons

MS University of Washington, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, 2019, Advised by Chelsea Wood
BS Cornell University, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, 2017, Advised by C. Drew Harvell  

I am a biodiversity scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine, studying how environmental change and human activities reshape ecological communities across space and time. My work spans freshwater, marine, and terrestrial systems, from zooplankton communities in mountain lakes and disease on coral reefs to broad patterns of biodiversity change across thousands of ecological time series.

Throughout my PhD, I have examined how introduced species alter the taxonomic and functional diversity of lake communities, how human disturbance and extreme events interact to affect coral disease, and how seagrass ecosystems can reduce disease risk in nearby organisms and marine farms. I also use large ecological datasets and statistical models to investigate where species turnover is occurring most rapidly and how climate change interacts with biogeographic boundaries to shape those patterns.

I am motivated by a desire to understand how interactions across biological, environmental, spatial, and temporal scales generate the ecological patterns we observe. No single discipline or ecosystem fully captures these questions, so my work draws from ecology, parasitology, marine biology, biogeography, and data science. Across these areas, I seek to understand where biodiversity is changing, what is driving those changes, and what those changes mean for the health, functioning, and resilience of ecosystems and the societies that depend on them.