In my PhD at Columbia*, I work on within-species variation** and its impact on ecological communities. My current thinking is about species rarity. In the past, I’ve worked on lianas at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and rumor-spread models at Duke. My background is in theoretical math, and I (really) love probability and complex systems theory. I am currently a Teaching Fellow at Columbia, where I teach a class entitled “Explaining Biodiversity: Niches, Complex Systems, Chaos, and Neutral Theory.”

*With advisors Duncan Menge and Maria Uriarte

**The why of the thing: I feel the climate catastrophe on a personal level. I have the great fortune of being a dual Costa Rican citizen, and so grew up with the hard evidence that biodiversity is glorious and matters. My work as a scientist is based on the hope that we can find natural laws about biodiversity. I also just really really like doing math.

Representative work:

  • Arroyo, E., Uriarte, M. & Muscarella, R. (in review). Complex associations between intraspecific trait variation in tree species and environmental heterogeneity in space and time

  • Arroyo, E., Uriarte, M. & Menge, D. (August 11, 2023). “Modeling the eco-evolutionary origins of trait variation.” Presentation at Ecological Society of America meeting.

  • Arroyo, E.* & Dabke, D. (2016). Rumors with Personality: Agent-based Rumor Spread in a Social Network with Network and Parameters from Facebook Data. SIAM Undergraduate Journal. Vol 9. (*equal co-authorship)