Franklin Egan

Franklin Egan

I am a PhD student in Penn State’s Ecology program interested in the conservation of beneficial biodiversity in agroecosystems. Beneficial insects such as pollinators or biocontrol agents can provide useful services to agriculture, but they require plant diversity to provide alternate hosts, overwintering habitat, and floral resources. My research focuses on quantifying patterns of plant diversity in agricultural landscapes and using GIS and aerial imagery to link plant communities to land use patterns. My research explores the plant life of Lancaster County, PA, and assesses how plant diversity is distributed across the fields, pastures, woodlots, and other uncultivated fragments that compose these landscapes. In future field seasons, these data will be combined with data on insect diversity patterns to link beneficial insects to the plants, habitats, and landscapes they require for survival. This research will contribute towards the objective of developing a quantitative framework for developing landscape scale management strategies for conserving beneficial diversity in agroecosystems.

I graduated from Cornell University in 2004 with BS degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology and natural resources management. As an undergrad and recent graduate, I worked in various capacities as a technician or research assistant. I had the good fortune to work on a diversity of projects ranging from biocontrol of invasive weeds in the Rocky Mountains, to Nitrogen cycling in Venezuelan rivers, to life history evolution in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Before joining the Mortensen lab in Fall 2007, I was also fortunate to have the opportunity to spend a season apprenticing on a diversified organic vegetable farm in Orange County, NY. We grew more than 50 varieties of herbs and vegetables and sold our produce at the Union Square farmer’s market, the flagship market of NYC’s all-local GreenMarket system. I am passionate about sustainable agriculture, and I am looking forward to making a contribution to the science behind it as an ecologist here in the Penn State weed ecology group.

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Publications