College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Entomology

My research focuses on how and why plant phenotypes vary within species, and the consequences of that variation at higher trophic levels. In particular, I am interested in mechanisms of population-level variation in plant defense traits and in plant ontogeny as an important axis of trait diversity across scales. For my NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Wetzel lab, I will be working with common milkweed and its insect herbivores. I will investigate how climate and genetic variation interact with plant ontogeny to shape milkweed trait diversity and associated insect communities.

Visit my website: https://oliviacope.weebly.com/