Georgetown University

Elise Larsen is a population and community ecologist in the Ries Lab of Butterfly Informatics. Other than her undergraduate years at Michigan State University, Elise has spent most of her life in the mid-Atlantic region of the USA. She earned her Biology PhD from University of Maryland and currently lives with her spouse and child in the Virginia suburbs of DC. In her work at Georgetown University, Elise studies how species traits mediate patterns of timing and abundance in North American butterflies. Her work relies heavily on non-scientist observations of butterflies, from both systematic surveys (Pollard walks, NABA counts) and opportunistic observations (iNaturalist, eButterfly). She is grateful for a public that cares about these charismatic creatures, and is hopeful that what we learn from them can  help us understand less well known taxa. She is particularly interested in how species' life histories mediate population responses to environmental changes.  Elise is on iNaturalist & Twitter as EcologyElise