91̽»¨

Education

Ph.D. Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New Hampshire

M.S. Biology, University of New Mexico

B.S. Biological Sciences, Honors Tutorial College, 91̽»¨

Bio

I grew up in Circleville, Ohio, the home of the Pumpkin Show, and earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the Honors Tutorial College at 91̽»¨. After graduating, I moved to various corners of the country for graduate school, work as a wildlife, fisheries, and conservation technician, and academic positions before ending up back in Athens in 2022 as a faculty member in the Honors Tutorial College. I joined the Biological Sciences Department in January 2024. My favorite place in the world is Great Basin National Park, Nevada, where I did much of the field work for my dissertation on small mammal ecology, biogeography, and conservation.

Research Interests

My research interests are centered on the diversity, distribution, monitoring, and conservation of mammals, especially small mammals like rodents and shrews. I mostly work at the scale of community ecology and biogeography, and I am especially interested in investigating why certain species coexist in an area, why other species do not, and how biodiversity varies across environmental gradients, such as along mountainsides. I use species traits and phylogenetic relationships to quantify what’s known as functional and phylogenetic dimensions of biodiversity, an approach that helps to link underlying ecological and evolutionary processes to the biodiversity patterns we observe. I am also passionate about improving our knowledge of the status, distribution, and ecology of Ohio’s small mammals, and in documenting that knowledge with museum specimens. My personal research site is here: .

Publications

Selected Publications

Nations, J.A., Kohli, B.A., Handika, H., Achmadi, A.S., Polito, M.J., Rowe, K.C., & Esselstyn, J.A. 2024. The roles of isolation and interspecific interaction in generating the functional diversity of an insular mammal radiation. Accepted at Oikos.

Kohli, B.A., R.J. Miyajima and M.A. Jarzyna. 2022. Elevational diversity patterns of rodents differ between wet and arid mountains. Global Ecology and Biogeography 31: 1726-1740.

Kays R., M. Lasky, M.L. Allen, R. Dowler, M.T.R. Hawkins, A.G. Hope, B.A. Kohli, V.L. Mathis, B. McLean, L.E. Olson, C.W. Thompson, D. Thornton, J. Widness & M.V. Cove. 2022. Which mammals can be identified from camera traps and crowdsourced photographs? Journal of Mammalogy 103: 767-775.

Kohli, B.A., R.D. Stevens, E.A. Rickart and R.J. Rowe. (2021). Mammals on mountainsides revisited: trait-based tests of assembly reveal the importance of abiotic filters. Journal of Biogeography 48: 1606-1621.

Kohli, B.A. and M.A. Jarzyna. (2021). Pitfalls of ignoring trait resolution when drawing conclusions about ecological processes. Global Ecology and Biogeography 30: 1139-1152.

Colella, J.P., R.B. Stephens, M.L. Campbell, B.A. Kohli, D.J. Parsons and B.S. McLean. (2021). The Open-Specimen Movement. BioScience 71: 405-414.

Kohli, B.A. and R.J. Rowe. (2019). Beyond guilds: The promise of continuous traits for mammalian functional diversity. Journal of Mammalogy 100: 285-298.

Kohli, B.A., D.A. Charlet and R.J. Rowe. (2019). Small mammal communities in Nevada’s Swamp Cedar woodlands, a globally unique and imperiled habitat. The Southwestern Naturalist 64: 1-7.

Kohli, B.A., R.C. Terry and R.J. Rowe. (2018). A trait-based framework for discerning drivers of species co-occurrence across heterogeneous landscapes. Ecography 41: 1921-1933.