We are collaborating with the Rominger, Hickerson, Dawson and Gillespie labs to help build a computational model that allows users to explore biological processes responsible for multiple aspects of biodiversity, including species abundance, genetic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity. This model-based  approach lets us test hypotheses about the generation and maintenance of biodiversity in the Atlantic Forests of Brazil, and we have been leveraging it to make the model-based inference accessible to the scientific community by create pedagogically effective courses and workshops to enable students, researchers, and stakeholders from many backgrounds to understand biodiversity theory and the data science tools needed to test those theories with data.

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In our lab, the RoLE model has allowed us to merge functional (ecological trait) data analysis into population genetic and genomic information, particularly focusing on bird populations distributed in forest islands in the northeastern portion of the country.