Excellence in the Field and the Lab

Dr. Gabe Costa is an Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences, and Coordinator of Environmental Sciences and GIS at AUM. His research is mainly focused in understanding the ecological and evolutionary drivers of variation in Biodiversity across the globe. Dr. Costa has worked with different groups of organisms such as amphibians, reptiles and mammals disentangling the roles of abiotic, biotic and evolutionary factors in explaining diversity patterns from local to global scales. Dr. Costa is also interested in using his findings to create instrumental knowledge that can support conservation decisions. By understanding what factors influence how biodiversity changes across space we might be able to quantify, predict, mitigate and possibly manage the growing negative impacts caused by human activities. Dr. Costa teaches Biostatistics, Species Distribution Modeling, Landscape Ecology, and Biogeography and Macroecology. His classes usually have a strong focus on analytical skills including learning to work in the R environment, GIS and spatial analysis. Dr. Costa research has reached a broad audience with over 60 peer reviewed articles published that collectively have been cited more than 2,400 times (Scholar page) (Lab page)