Andrea Westerband

BS Environmental Biology, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 2010
PhD Biology, University of Miami, 2016

The Westerband lab studies the mechanisms that produce and maintain variation in morphological, physiological, chemical, and life history traits both across and within terrestrial plant species. Our lab explores the consequences of this variation for whole-plant performance and ecological processes, including population spread and invasion. Research in our group has a strong quantitative focus, combining plant physiology with demography, and we typically couple greenhouse studies with manipulative and observational field studies.

Previous research projects have spanned a range of environments, ecosystems, plant functional groups, and countries, including the tropical forests of Hawaii, premontane forests of Costa Rica, and the tropical forests and temperate woodlands of Australia. In the next phase of our work, we will shift to exploring large-scale trait variation across a natural aridity gradient starting from the plains and temperate forests of the eastern US to the arid woodlands in the west.

Please visit our lab website for more information. We are recruiting graduate and undergraduate students, beginning in 2025.