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I am broadly interested in restoration ecology and pollination biology with questions centered around mitigating biodiversity loss in native pollinators and their floral hosts. In my work, I apply effective plant species conservation by considering the mating systems unique to each flowering plant.
Working within these topics, I ask questions keeping in mind the variable and sometimes hard to predict impacts of anthropogenic disturbances. Through this lense, I try to better understand possible effects on the critical ecological relationships between floral associated insects and plants. |
Current Work
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I joined Western EcoSystems Technology Inc. (WEST) in Fall of 2023 as an Associate Biologist and Pollination Ecologist based in South Texas. With WEST, I often work with the PV Solar industry and focus on a variety of topics including biodiversity, restoration management practices, and floral-associated arthropod conservation. I have worked on developing projects associated with monarch butterfly and bumble bee conservation, eDNA monitoring of pollinators, vegetation monitoring, and much more.
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Graduate Research and Publications
For my MS research I examined interactions between pollinators and mixed-mating systems in the genus Triodanis (Campanulaceae). All species in this genus of weedy native flowering annuals exhibit a mixed mating system of dimorphic cleistogamy with open and closed flowers, making it a unique system to examine questions in pollination ecology. A better understanding of plant-pollinator interactions are more important than ever as anthropocene pressures have the potential to threaten this mutualism. Previous work that studied herbarium records has established a shift in peak flowering time in the species Triodanis biflora (Berg et al, 2019). By characterizing pollinator assembly across the range of these species, it creates the baseline with which we can build future research. Additional work focused on the efficacy of citizen science in the classroom.
Tillotson-Chavez, K., Lukavsky, S., & Weber, J. (2024). Assessing Pollinator Assembly And Efficacy Across Species Ranges In The Genus Triodanis (Campanulaceae). Journal of Pollination Ecology, 35, 47–60. https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)767
Tillotson-Chavez, K. and Weber, J. (2024) ‘A New Generation of Citizen Scientists: Self-Efficacy and Skill Growth in a Voluntary Project Applied in the College Classroom Setting’, Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 9(1), p. 7. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.641.
Tillotson-Chavez, K., Lukavsky, S., & Weber, J. (2024). Assessing Pollinator Assembly And Efficacy Across Species Ranges In The Genus Triodanis (Campanulaceae). Journal of Pollination Ecology, 35, 47–60. https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)767
Tillotson-Chavez, K. and Weber, J. (2024) ‘A New Generation of Citizen Scientists: Self-Efficacy and Skill Growth in a Voluntary Project Applied in the College Classroom Setting’, Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 9(1), p. 7. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.641.
Previous Work
Surveying silvicultural sites and informing best management practices for habitat enhancement
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Ex-situ conservation of carnivorous plants
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Small bee identification for assessing pollinator assemblies
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