About me
I grew up just north of New York City with parents who loved the arts and maintained creative practices in painting and writing. As I pursued my undergraduate degree at Bowdoin College in biology and Latin American studies, I was exposed to field ecology, gained a love for outdoor activities through backpacking and surfing, and spent a summer studying the host plant preferences of meadow spittlebugs. After graduating, I explored many interests at these intersections: leading wilderness trips for middle schoolers, working on a goat farm, as a naturalist in the Peruvian Amazon, teaching film photography and local ecology in Santa Barbara, and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Outside of being a graduate student, I like to go on long trail runs, make zines, try new recipes, and sketch things around me.
Research
I am curious about how spatial and temporal variation in plant-insect interactions scale up to the community level. I am currently using field experiments, natural history observations, and herbarium collections to understand the role that windblown insects play in a perennial alpine plant system. Specifically, I’m studying how the plant traits of stickiness and scent (VOCs) shape biotic interactions in a low-productivity ecosystem over both seasonal and long-term time scales.
Contact
Graduate Group in Ecology
Department of Entomology and Nematology
Briggs Hall 380K
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616 USA
Fellowships and Awards
2022 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP)
2023 Mary DeDecker Botanical Grant ($1000)
2023 Davis Botanical Society Grant ($2,000)
2024 White Mountain Research Station Minigrant ($1,000)
2024 Sacramento Public Library Parks and Tranquility Project ($2,500)
2025 Mildred E. Mathias Graduate Student Research Grant ($3000)
Publications
Lichtenstein, J. L. L., B. L. McEwen, S. D. Primavera, T. Lenihan, Z. M. Wood, W. P. Carson, and R. Costa-Pereira. 2024. Top-down effects of intraspeciflic predator behavioral variation. Oecologia 205:203–214. link
Wood, Z.M. and Jones, P.L. 2020. The effects of host plant species and plant quality on growth and development in the meadow spittlebug (Philaenus spumarius) on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy. Northeastern Naturalist 27(1): 168–185. link