Tim Terlizzi
Paleoecology and Quaternary Science
I am currently an MS student at the University of Wyoming. I work with Dr. Thomas Minckley on studying changes to plant diversity during the Quaternary. I am fascinated by plants and their ability to shape the ecology of a region. My research focuses on understanding how plant communities shift with changes to the climate.
Research Interests
Vegetation shapes the way we perceive an environment. The presence and absence of taxa indicate the type of environment present. The climate of a region is crucial to determining the composition of plants within an ecosystem. Therefore it has become increasingly important to understand how the composition of plant communities will shift as we learn more about future changes to our climate.
I am interested in studying changes in plant communities, especially in terms of functional diversity. Plant functional traits are the strategies employed by different taxa of plants to increase their overall fitness. Through studying the diversity of traits within a community, we can determine the pressures faced by the plants as well as how niches evolve within an ecosystem.
Publications
Coming soon....