I am an ecologist and plant biologist studying human impacts on plant distributions. I source and contribute to large-scale plant occurrence datasets which I use in statistical modeling research to address questions related to the species composition and range limits of future forests. The Anthropocene is causing a global redistribution of plants and animals, and my goal is to use principles from both biology and philosophy to determine where plants “belong” in the coming decades and centuries.

In 2022 I finished my PhD in Biology in Chris Field’s Lab at Stanford University. Presently, I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the California Academy of Sciences, where I leverage vast amounts of community science data to model ecological patterns across California.

apaytonhill [at] gmail [dot] com