Alex Byrne M.Sc - Co founder
Alex Byrne is a behavioral and evolutionary ecologist. For his PhD, Alex studies the evolution of novel mating signals in crickets across the Hawaiian Islands, investigating how ecological context, receiver psychology, and species interactions shape signal diversification. His master’s research examined collective oviposition behavior in vernal pool amphibians, combining field experiments, mesocosms, and computational and statistical modeling to understand how social cues and environmental heterogeneity influence reproductive decisions. Alex has also contributed to research spanning the thermal tolerance of Japanese knotweed rhizomes, filtration capacity of freshwater mussels, movement ecology of red-backed salamanders, predator–prey dynamics involving dragonflies, and the natural history of mink frogs.
Christian Liriano - Co founder
Christian Liriano’s research interests span aquatic and terrestrial ecology, with a particular focus on the habitat ecology and natural history of understudied organisms in northeastern North America. His work explores how species and ecological communities are distributed across habitats and how environmental conditions, spatial structure, and species interactions shape patterns of biodiversity. He is especially interested in understudied groups such as spiders and bryophytes and in using natural history, community ecology, network ecology, and theoretical ecology to better understand ecological patterns across heterogeneous landscapes. As a student at CUNY, he continues to develop these research interests in preparation for pursuing a Ph.D. CV
