THE ALLEN LAB at The Pennsylvania State University

Stephen joined the lab in June 2020 as a postdoctoral researcher. He completed his PhD at Baylor University, where he explored how anthropogenic nutrient enrichment alters the temporal assembly and spatial distribution of benthic algal and macroinvertebrate assemblages. He is broadly interested in natural controls on community dynamics, and how human alteration of the environment changes natural communities and processes. In the Allen lab, he is working on the StreamCLIMES and AIMS projects, and is particularly interested in the environmental controls (such as drying) on temporal beta diversity patterns.

Veronica joined the lab in November 2021 as a research technologist. She completed her PhD in 2021 at University of Pittsburgh, where she worked with amphibians and the effects of climate change on host susceptibility to the chytrid fungus. For her masters, at Tulane University, she worked with changes in pathogenicity of the chytrid fungus comparing the chytrid from 15 years ago to the current one. She is broadly interested in the impacts of climate change on the biodiversity of streams and ponds. In the Allen lab, she will be working on DNA extraction and PCR for the StreamCLIMES and AIMS projects, and conducuting field work in streams in Oklahoma and Kansas, and the Stone Valley Forest in Pennsylvania. She is also interested in studying changes in the biodiversity of salamanders with chytrid in drying streams compared to permanent water bodies.

Sean joined the lab in Spring 2022 as a postdoctoral researcher. He completed his PhD at the University of Oklahoma, where he studied how large-scale freshwater conservation initiatives like environmental flows require solutions that involve both people and nature. As a Master’s student at Marshall University, Sean used environmental DNA (eDNA) to study the ecology and decline of eastern hellbender salamanders. He is broadly interested in how both people and nature influence the ecology and conservation of freshwater ecosystems. At PSU, Sean is researching how DNA metabarcoding performs at detecting changes in macroinvertebrate communities compared to traditional morphological identification techniques as part of the StreamCLIMES project.