Ian Ausprey joined the EEB program in January 2025 and is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University in the Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology. His research spans community ecology, landscape ecology, functional ecology, population biology, and biodiversity conservation, with a focus on birds as model organisms. He investigates critical topics such as how agricultural and elevational gradients shape tropical bird communities, how urbanization, fragmentation, and wildfire impact avian populations, and how management strategies can promote avian biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. He regularly integrates functional traits and phylogenies to identify mechanistic explanations underlying the sensitivities of species to anthropogenic disturbance and the evolution of biotic communities across space and time.