Associate Professor
Scientific Co-Director Hitchcock Chemical Ecology Center Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology Graduate Program Department of Biology University of Nevada, Reno richards_cv_2024.pdf [email protected] |
Ericka Kay : Co-advised PhD student
Ericka is interested in phytochemically mediated interactions between industrial hemp and its herbivore community with a focus on the synergistic effects of complex mixtures of plant defense. website [email protected] |
Devon Picklum - PhD student
Devon studies how plant-insect interactions are mediated by floral traits (eg. color and chemistry) in Sierra Nevada and Great Basin wildflowers. website [email protected] |
Ari Grele - PhD student
Ari is interested in how floral nectar chemistry can impact plant fitness and pollinator diversity, and how abiotic and biotic factors may influence these interactions in native Nevadan and Californian milkweed species. website [email protected] |
Abby Jarrett- PhD student
Abby's research will broadly focus on disturbance ecology, asking questions about how Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (TIK) influences plant community assembly and phytochemical diversity. Experiments will take place in Ecuador with Kichwa and Wao-speaking communities, where they will help me study their garden systems, called "chakras," an early agroforestry method practiced by Indigenous communities across the Amazon Basin. [email protected] |
Haley Dole - PhD student
Haley is researching how plant ontogeny and environmental factors influence the phytochemistry of a tropical pepper plant (Piper kelleyi), while also exploring how this phytochemical variation predicts and maintains the high diversity of specialist caterpillars (Eois spp.) feeding on the pepper plant. [email protected] |