Alex's research focuses on mutualisms, specifically the costs of mutualism, which are an often-ignored aspect of this crucial species interaction. Originally from Iowa, Alex received a B.S. in Biology from Iowa State University, and after which, inspired by the complexity and dynamics of tall grass prairie and hardwood forest plant communities as well as an influential community ecology course, he moved to Tucson, Arizona to complete a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. During his Ph.D., Alex studied how plants within the genus Datura (Solanaceae) allocate their limited resources to two mutualisms, pollination and seed dispersal, and examined how changes in allocation to both mutualisms influenced the behavior of the plants’ pollinators and seed dispersers. As a current postdoc in the Caves Lab, Alex is examining the effects of third-party species on the mutualism between cleaner shrimp and their fish clients as well as developing methods to measure the cleaning quality of individual shrimp. When he's not working in the lab or field, Alex is usually running games of Dungeons and Dragons or Call of Cthulhu, working his way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, or reading horror novels.