I am a curatorial assistant in the Recent Invertebrate Collection at the California Academy of Sciences. I started as a volunteer in the department in 2014 and joined as a full time in 2017. My work currently is focused on digitizing our collections as part of the NSF funded DigIn Grant. The Invertebrate Zoology collection is aiming to digitize 56,000 marine non-molluscan specimen lots over the next 3 years.
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Curatorial Assistant, Botany
Curator of Herpetology, Emeritus
John J. Rose Postdoctoral Fellow (former), Botany
Documenting the world's vast plant diversity has been one of the most challenging endeavors in the natural sciences. Inspired by the exuberant tropical plant diversity, my research interests started with floristic projects on cloud forests and tropical wet forest relicts in Venezuela. I have studied species diversity and taxonomy of the giant genus Croton (Euphorbiaceae) and participated in collaborative projects on the systematics of the diverse genus Ruellia (Acanthaceae).
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Chancey MacDonald is a post-doctoral researcher at the California Academy of Sciences, where he is a co-investigator of how depth interacts with the assembly drivers, functional structure, and ecology of global reef fish assemblages, as well as global stressors on mesophotic coral ecosystems. Chancey completed his PhD at James Cook University in Australia, where he investigated how depth influences a broad range of ecological relationships among coral-associated reef fishes.
Collection Manager, Botany
My time in the Botany department at the Cal Academy spans my graduate and curatorial assistant work from 2005-2011 and my return in 2018 to present. I studied the taxonomy of Paleotropical Mendoncia (Acanthaceae) for my MS degree and was lucky enough to travel to Madagascar twice. Now, I manage the collection and look forward to the challenging yet fulfilling work ahead with our great team.
Chair and Curator of Aquatic Biology, Emeritus
My research focus has combined field and laboratory studies of aquatic animal evolution and behavior, ranging from microscopic bioluminescent bacteria to macroscopic man-eating elasmobranchs.