Katy Cummings
Alex Walus is currently a PhD student of Interdisciplinary Ecology in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and is affiliated with the Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences department and Nature Coast Biological Station, advised by Dr. Marc Hensel. She earned her M.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife (2021) and B.S. in Environmental Biology (2018) from Michigan State University. Between her master’s and PhD, she worked as a scientist in environmental consulting and as a fisheries technician for Michigan DNR.
Alex is a coastal community ecologist broadly interested in the effects of climate change on food webs across multiple systems. To explore how coastal communities are changing and will continue to change, she uses experimental ecology, surveys, and big data to answer large scale questions. She is particularly interested in how seagrass fish communities have changed temporally and spatially in relation to temperature and habitat across the Gulf Coast. She is also interested in how the strength of top-down control affects marsh invertebrate community structure and ecosystem function along a tropicalization gradient.