Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s cluster hire of four tenure-track faculty in the School of Biological Sciences is advancing research into global environmental change and sustainability.
School Director and Professor Frank Anderson said hiring faculty as a group is a rare move in higher education, and it is an example of what makes SIU Carbondale a Research 1 university in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions for Higher Education.
“What unites these new faculty is a shared commitment to understanding how biological systems respond to environmental pressures and a global perspective spanning six continents,” he said.
Assistant Professors Marie-Sophie Garcia-Heras, Michael Grundler and Iris Holmes began this fall; Laís Petri arrives in January, after completing postdoctoral research at Michigan State University. The new professors cited the area’s natural beauty, including the Shawnee National Forest, and SIU’s status as an R1 research institution as key factors that drew them to Southern Illinois.
Marie-Sophie Garcia-Heras: Tracking predators to protect ecosystems
As an avian ecologist and conservation biologist, Marie-Sophie Garcia-Heras studies birds of prey as indicators of ecosystem health. Her research examines how environmental and human-caused stressors affect bird populations throughout their entire life cycles, from breeding to migration to survival, with implications that cascade through entire ecosystems.
Using GPS telemetry, nest monitoring, field observations and lab analyses, she connects individual bird behavior to population trends — insights that inform real-world conservation strategies. Her approach reflects training across continents. She studied Egyptian vultures facing extinction in Spain’s Canary Islands for her master’s research and investigated endangered black harriers for her Ph.D. at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
Through interdisciplinary collaborations with local and international partners, she translates field results into practical guidance for conservation agencies and stakeholders. Her research portfolio includes Pueo (Hawaiian short-eared owls), Michigan bald eagles and seabirds along the U.S. Pacific Coast, with plans to next research open-space and farmland raptors. Her aim is to reveal patterns that might be invisible to researchers working in a single system. Beyond teaching key concepts students need to succeed as professionals, Garcia-Heras enjoys sharing the knowledge and perspectives she’s gained firsthand through her research in ecology and conservation around the world. Her hope is to inspire students to “think critically and creatively about finding sustainable solutions to maintain biodiversity and the functioning of healthy ecosystems.”
Michael Grundler: Mapping adaptive evolution
Evolutionary ecologist Michael Grundler studies one of nature’s most successful animals: squamates — lizards, snakes and worm lizards. The order Squamata is the most diverse reptile group and makes up roughly one-third of all terrestrial vertebrates, yet how it achieved such remarkable diversity had remained poorly understood.
In a landmark 2024 Science paper, Grundler demonstrated that catastrophic events don’t only destroy — they can catalyze explosive bursts of diversification that fundamentally reshape the structure of life on Earth. His analysis of natural history observations from more than 60,000 animals, alongside genomic data from 1,018 species, revealed a striking pattern. When the Chicxulub asteroid impact and related catastrophes 66 million years ago wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs, snakes underwent a major burst of change.
“Species were evolving quickly and rapidly acquiring the ability to eat new types of prey,” said Grundler, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. That diet included newly diversifying mammals and birds. This dietary flexibility sparked a cascade of evolutionary innovation that produced the 3,700+ snake species alive today, from tiny threadsnakes that eat ants to giant pythons capable of consuming antelope.
“The vertebrate story is just so remarkable,” he said. “And I think that when you start making connections between the past and the present, conserving the diversity of vertebrate animals and their homes becomes that much more important.”
At SIU, he wants to spark scientific curiosity among his students — like when spotting an armadillo around campus (the species was first spotted in Southern Illinois in 1979). He encourages students to think about how these creatures developed long snouts housing a long, sticky tongue perfect for eating insects, and how their ancestors included giant armored armadillos — some weighing more than a VW Beetle and sporting spiky clubs on their tails.
Iris Holmes: Tracing the origins of outbreaks
Iris Holmes uses microbial community ecology to uncover how diseases emerge and jump between species. Working primarily with reptiles, she investigates the ecological and evolutionary forces that create “host generalists” — microbes able to infect multiple species and, under the right conditions, become novel pathogens.
Her work examines how community context — which species are present in a habitat and how they interact — shapes which microbes can jump between hosts, with special focus on conditions like habitat disturbance and climate change that increase pandemic potential. Central to this research is the microbiome: the community of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microbes that help their host digest food and ward off diseases.
Holmes’ studies of snakes and lizards show that higher host diversity can limit how easily bacteria spread between species, even as it fosters richer microbe-microbe interactions. This knowledge can guide conservation research and policies as species face environmental stressors such as new diseases and parasites.
Her goal in this work: to distill general principles of how pathogens jump between species — including to humans — in support of evidence-based strategies that can predict, and prevent, potential pandemics.
Holmes, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, is currently mentoring two undergraduate students and collaborating with several labs. This spring, as she launches her first local field season, she hopes to involve more students, introducing them to “open questions in reptile and amphibian ecology, evolution and conservation, as well as ways of building careers around those big questions.”
Laís Petri: Strengthening native plant communities
Laís Petri is a plant community ecologist who asks a central question: What makes some native plant communities resist invasion — and how can we restore that resistance once it’s lost? While invasive plants are often removed with the expectation that natives will simply rebound, Petri’s research shows recovery pivots on features of the native community itself, not only on the invader’s traits.
Building on this insight, she investigates how legacies of disturbance, climate and nutrient inputs shape present-day resilience. Her work reframes conservation from “controlling the threat” to “strengthening the defense.”
Petri’s research began as an undergraduate at the Universidade Federal de São Carlos (Sorocaba, Brazil), where her fieldwork documented slash pine invading the rare transition zone where the Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) meets the Atlantic Forest.
To help put her research into action, Petri convenes workshops with land managers and agency leaders to translate patterns from hundreds of studies into actionable guidance. Her international portfolio — from Brazilian savannas to North American forests — provides a comparative lens rare in ecology.
At SIU, she will focus on plant-community challenges specific to Southern Illinois, building collaborations with faculty, students and natural-resource agencies so students can connect classroom learning with real ecological problems.
