Lab members and affiliates

Robert Cooper completed his PhD and postdoc in the Shaffer lab, and moved in 2025 to start an assistant professorship in the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Department at Virginia Tech. He uses genomic and computational tools to advance conservation biology of threatened species, uncovering how human disturbance, including invasive species, habitat destruction, and climate change, affects population health, structure, and movement across landscapes. His research also explores the novel environmental pressures (e.g. temperature, desiccation, and disease) that result from anthropogenic changes and how they impact threatened and endangered species. In the Shaffer Lab, Robert primarily focused on western reptiles and amphibians, particularly the California tiger salamander which faces threats from habitat loss, fragmentation, drought, and hybridization with non-native salamanders. This work incorporated range-wide genomic surveys, field-based hydroperiod manipulative experiments, molecular thermal tolerance assays, and genetic rescue projects to enhance the conservation of this endemic amphibian.

Joey Curti completed his PhD and postdoc in the Shaffer lab, and moved in 2025 to a postdoc position with the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. Joey’s research focuses on the impacts of anthropogenic stressors on bat community composition in urban areas across California. Specifically, using unmanned aerial vehicles with onboard sensors and acoustic microphones, Joey will survey bat populations across urban Los Angeles to understand 1) how light and sound pollution vary with altitude, 2) how bat communities respond to these 3-dimensional pollution gradients in real time, and 3) if functional traits of individual bat species explain their relationship to light and sound pollution at different altitudinal strata. As a La Kretz Postdoctoral Fellow, Joey will continue to work with local agencies, including the city of Los Angeles, to translate his science into meaningful conservation actions and policy.

Dave Daversa is interested in optimizing landscape connectivity for endangered species threatened by disease. In collaboration with the National Park Service, he is working on better understanding movement and infection risk in endangered Yosemite toads, with the goal of developing data-driven re-introduction strategies to strengthen their vulnerable populations. Dave received his PhD in 2016 from the University of Cambridge, and then went on to do postdocs at the Institute for Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool and the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center in Alton, Illinois.

Zachary MacDonald finished his postdoc in the Shaffer lab in 2025, and moved to the Inland Empire as an assistant professor of Entomology at UC Riverside. Zac is broadly interested in ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that structure biodiversity in space and time. Throughout his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, much of Zac’s work focused on conservation applications of theoretical ecology, evaluating relationships between habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, and emergent patterns of species diversity. As a La Kretz Center Postdoctoral Fellow in the Shaffer Lab, Zac expanded his work into landscape and conservation genomics threatened and in a suite of California and Canadian butterfly species, including local endemics and wide-ranging western North American taxa to better inform conservation practice.

Ben Thompsky joined the Shaffer Lab in February of 2024, where he has been working on the California Tiger Salamander genomics projects. Ben is a recent graduate from the UC Santa Cruz Biomolecular Engineering program. He is interested in conservation genomics and particularly de-extinction through genetic engineering. He hopes to further these goals by studying genetic rescue and creating new genetic tools for improved DNA synthesis and large scale editing technology.

Erin Toffelmier conducted her PhD and postdoctoral research in the Shaffer lab at UCLA, and is now a faculty affiliate at the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech University. She uses population and landscape genomic tools to understand the structure and health of at-risk species and ecosystems. Erin’s ongoing work includes landscape genomics of the southern alligator lizard complex, a multi-species investigation of population structure of a suite of plant and animal species across the Los Angeles basin, and conservation genetics of the federally and state endangered California tiger salamander. She also continues to serve as Associate Director of the California Conservation Genomics Project, a large-scale, multi-institution effort to rapidly enable the development of a novel conservation genomics toolkit in support of the management California biodiversity.