Courtney Reed is a PhD candidate in the department of Ecology, Evolutionary, and Organismal Biology at Brown University. Her research focuses on how small mammals navigate the inherent trade-offs between eating and avoiding predation. Courtney began working with small mammals during her Master’s in Dr. Hopi Hoekstra’s lab, where she studied reproductive physiology in Peromyscus mice. She is currently working on her doctoral research under the supervision of Dr. Tyler Kartzinel at Brown University. Her dissertation asks how habitat structure and predation interactively affect morphology and foraging behavior in a small mammal community in Kenya. She also asks how these local processes scale up to affect morphological diversity across the gerbil subfamily (Gerbillinae), a speciose clade with ranges across Africa and Asia. Courtney uses a combination of field experiments, museum specimens, and molecular tools in her research.