Amy Freestone received her doctorate in Ecology from University of California – Davis in 2005. For her dissertation, she studied how both local (small-scale) and regional (large-scale) influences interact to drive patterns of biodiversity, and how the relative importance of these influences varies with spatial scale. She explored these questions using a system of endemic plant species in small serpentine wetlands in California’s North Coast Range. For her postdoctoral research at the Smithsonian, Amy has shifted her attention to marine systems, and has expanded the biogeographic breadth of her research to a latitudinal scale. She is now a Marine Science Network Postdoctoral Fellow in residence at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, under the advisement of Richard Osman. Amy’s marine research interests broadly include community ecology, invasion ecology, spatial ecology, and biogeography. Her current research targets how ecological mechanisms reciprocally drive and are driven by the latitudinal diversity gradient.