About

The Youngflesh Lab in the Department of Biological Sciences at Clemson University (starting Jan 2024), is focused on using quantitative tools to address questions in global change ecology, biodiversity, and population biology. Research in the lab places a particular emphasis on exploring cross-scale interactions between the biotic and abiotic environment, seeking to understand how and why ecological dynamics vary across environmental gradients. Much of this work ultimately aims to understand which species and systems are most sensitive to the impacts of global change. While current work is primarily focused on birds and marine mammals, interests span a broad range of ecological systems.

Methodologically, research in the lab takes a cross-disciplinary perspective, developing ecoinformatic approaches to integrate large-scale data streams from a variety of sources, including community science projects, satellites, remote camera networks, and field-based efforts. The reproducible, analytical pipelines that power this work leverage a variety of methods from statistics and computer science, including hierarchical Bayesian modeling and deep learning.

Dr. Casey Youngflesh is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at Michigan State University and, as of Jan 2024, is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University. The Youngflesh Lab is looking to build a diverse, collaborative team, unified by an interest in applying leading-edge quantitative approaches to answer ecological questions. Prospective Ph.D. applicants and postdoctoral researchers should check the Opportunities page for more information.