Libby Ellwood, PhD

**We are pleased to announce that Libby took a Research Fellow position at La Brea Tar Pits & Museum in Summer 2017. The content on this page will become increasingly out-of-date. To catch up on Libby's activities, visit her new website here.**

Libby is broadly interested in the effects of climate change on plant and animal phenology. By studying how the phenology, or the timing of natural events, has changed over time and relative to abiotic variables, she attempts to better understand the dynamic relationship between organisms and their environment. This approach requires uncovering scarce historic phenological records, such as those housed in museum collections, and pairing them with contemporary observations to form long time series. The work of citizen scientists is playing an increasingly large role in this process – from aiding in the discovery of old records, to providing current observations – and supporting these efforts is the focus of her current research with iDigBio and Florida State University. Ultimately, she aims to address current issues in climate change ecology and inform conservation decisions through experimental and field investigations that employ a diversity of robust tools and creative methods.