Congratulations Dr. McDonough MacKenzie!

Posted by Lucy Zipf

On May 2 our own Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie successfully defended her PhD thesis!

Caitlin is excited!

Her public talk titled "Climate change, species loss, and spring phenology in an around Acadia National Park, Maine" was well attended and received by members of the BU community, Caitlin's many collaborators both in Boston and Maine, and her loving family and friends.

Caitlin's work utilized historic data in conjunction with her own field observations and experiments to document changes in species abundance and phenology in Acadia and northern Maine, an understudied and iconic region.

Caitlin with one of her common gardens on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park

She found that the phenology of plants and birds in and around Acadia are advancing with warming temperatures, but are doing so more slowly than in southern New England.

Further, using her field data on plant phenology along Acadia's three largest ridges and her common garden experiments Caitlin found that the temperature of local microclimate within a habitat is a better predictor of plant phenology than elevation, aspect, or plant source.

Caitlin will continue working in Acadia as a postdoc, having received a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship from the Society for Conservation Biology.

Amanda, Caitlin, and Lucy on a Primack Lab outing this winter

We are so proud of all Caitlin has achieved at BU and look forward to her continued success!