Anna, Jon, Julia, Amy Christiana, & Avery!
Carmen Blubaugh (carmen.blubaugh at uga.edu)
Biological Sciences, 460
PhD, Entomology, Purdue University (2015)
MS, Environmental Science, Indiana University (2010)
BA, Environmental Studies, Florida Atlantic University (2006)
Carmen’s CV
Carmen grew up in rural Indiana, went to college in South Florida, then did a wild variety of temporary field gigs (organic farming, wildland firefighting, invasive species management, emergency response, and of course, insect ecology research) in Missouri, North Carolina, Nebraska, Arkansas, Montana, and Prague, CZ, before finally starting graduate school. After a postdoc at Washington State University, she joined the faculty at Clemson University for two years before being recruited by UGA to chase down interesting research questions related to insect food webs in sustainable agroecosystems.
Graduate Students
Christiana Huss (MS Student)
Christiana finished her BS in Environment and Natural Resources at Clemson University in 2020. She moved with us to UGA after spending a summer working with our collaborators at Growing Green Family Farm, and started her MS in the lab in 2021! Christiana’s research focuses on the yellow-margined leaf beetle, an invasive pest of turnips that is rapidly expanding its range Northward. She is curious about what makes this invader so successful, how plant chemistry and plant diversity influence its suppression by predators.
Undergraduates
Jon Golan
Jon is an Entomology/Applied Biotechnology major at UGA and just won a CURO research assistantship to work with Christiana on using molecular tools to document predation of the invasive yellow-margined leaf beetle, and to examine how prey toxicity influences biological control..
Alumni:
Julia Berliner (MS 2022)
Julia graduated from SUNY Binghamton in 2020 with a BS in Environmental Science and is interested in how fertility resources and diet breadth mediate trophic interactions between plants, herbivores and predators.
Amy Sparer (MS 2022)
Amy graduated from Dickinson College with a BS in Biology, and spent a year as an environmental educator with the Student Conservation Association before working on an organic farm through the pandemic! Amy is interested in how plant diversity and plant functional traits shape the structure of natural enemy communities.
Melina Madden (undergrad 2018-2021)
Melina joined us for an internship in 2018 as a high school senior through Clemson’s Summer Program for Research Interns, and returned for four summers to sample bugs and weeds on organic farms all over GA, SC and NC. Melina examined relationships between weed diversity, predator diversity, and biological control. She’s presented her work at three meetings, and published her first paper in Environmental Entomology in 2021!
Mary-Frances Behnke (undergraduate researcher 2019-2020)
Mary-Frances is a Plant and Environmental Sciences major at Clemson, and spent summer 2019 and 2020 measuring the pest management consequences of excess organic fertilizers. As our resident insect taxonomy expert, Mary-Frances completed insect surveys on thousands of squash, tomato, and bean plants. She’s analyzing her huge data set to examine relationships between soil fertility, plant chemistry, herbivore pressure, and natural enemy attraction.
Grace Won
Grace is a Biological Sciences major at UGA and received an undergraduate research grant from UGA’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences to examine how red-imported fire ant activity influences the abundance and diversity of pests and beneficial insects on organic farms
Danielle Gray-Lewis (MS 2019)
Danielle is an MS student (co-advised by Matt Cutulle and Rebecca Schmidt-Jeffris), and came to us after completing her BS in Biology and Art at the College of Charleston. Danielle’s thesis grapples with the challenge of harmonizing mechanical, chemical, and ecological weed control tools in organic vegetable systems.
Ivy Widick (BS 2015, MS 2018, Lab manager, 2019)
Ivy is a wildlife ecologist who uses species distribution models informed by local adaptation and biotic interactions to forecast changes in distributions of endangered giant kangaroo rat populations under varying climate change scenarios. Ivy worked with us as an undergraduate at Purdue University to describe small mammal movement and microhabitat use under varying risk conditions. She joined us again three years later to help get the new lab rolling, and used video surveillance to examine antagonistic interactions between small mammals, invasive fire ants, and native insects. Ivy is now a landscape ecologist with the Wisconsin DNR
Andrew Godard (Undergraduate researcher 2018-2021)
Andrew is a Plant and Environmental Sciences major at Clemson, and took Dr. Blubaugh’s IPM course in spring 2018, and was the first student to join the lab! Andrew’s joined us at UGA for a 3rd field season and will be measuring weed and pest management consequences of surplus organic fertilizers.
Annie McElvenny (undergraduate researcher 2018-2019)
Annie is an Environmental and Natural Resources Management major, and joined us for a research internship this summer through Clemson’s EUREKA program, and examined effects of structural habitat complexity on seed consumption by small mammals, fire ants, and native insect granivores.
Although she’s very bad at following instructions, Rosie is an occasional field assistant and a placeholder for future amazing students! We’re currently recruiting students, so please check out my mentoring page if you’re interested in joining the lab.
Insect Ecology in Sustainable Agroecosystems 