Blaire Kleiman recently graduated with her PhD in Earth Systems Science in the Earth and Environment department, where she studied how temperature affects squash plants and the behavior of their bee pollinators in controlled and field environment agriculture, combining plant physiology, pollinator ecology, and quantitative methods. She has recently joined the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Davie, Florida, as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Allen Dray and Dr. Krishnaswamy Jayachandran. She holds the position through FIU and remains affiliated with the Department of Earth and Environment.
At USDA-ARS, Blaire studies biological control agents in the lab and field, and evaluates their field releases against two of South Florida’s most damaging invasive plants, Brazilian pepper and Old World climbing fern. She will also continue her post doc research on plant–insect interactions in biocontrol systems, untangling the ecological and impactful interactions for South Florida ecology.