I would describe my love for studying weevils much like the Larinus carlinae weevil’s pursuit for thistles: accidental but now borderline obsessive!

Native to Europe, L. carlinae was accidentally introduced to the East Coast of the U.S. then later purposely introduced further into the Americas as biocontrol. As a result, L. carlinae successfully eviscerated thistle populations but also unfortunately native thistles such as Pitcher’s Thistle, a keystone species to the Great Lakes Dunes.

Larinus carlinae was my first intro to the world of weevils as an undergraduate research assistant at Kalamazoo College with Dr. Binney Girdler. Originally, I pursued a Biology degree to go into the medical field and like many other first-gen students in the United States, it felt like the right and safe thing to do. But while I worked as an RA for an ecology lab, I fell in love with plants and insects and never looked back!

I received a Master’s Degree from Northwestern - Chicago Botanic Gardens continuing my work on L. carlinae and Pitcher’s Thistle with Dr. Kay Havens. While I continued conservation-oriented research during my Master’s, I also realized how much fun taxonomy was and how much research could still be done.

Now as a PhD student, I study weevil systematics of the subfamily Baridinae - The Tusked Flower Weevils - and investigate the evolution of their not-so-little tusks with Dr. Bruno de Medeiros in the Field Museum of Natural History. I also never gave up on my love for plants as I also investigated the pollination ecology of the Jackfruit genus Artocarpus with Dr. Nyree Zerega.

Overall, I enjoy the research I do immensely and am so privileged to be an Entomologist. I still remember as a high schooler from Los Angeles how much I loved being in nature despite there not being many green spaces around me. After this PhD, I am eager to pursue education as a professor and hope to also inspire other young folks towards ecology, evolution, and conservation.