Dr. Reti is the Director of the Santa Cruz Island Reserve, part of the UCSB Natural Reserve System. Prior to this, Jay was faculty in the Anthropology Department at UC Santa Cruz and still retains an honorary Assistant Professor position there. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA (2006), and a Master's degree (2010) and Ph.D. (2013) from the Evolutionary Archaeology program at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Dr. Reti is an archaeologist and paleoanthropologist with over a decade of experience in human evolutionary sites in East Africa, including running field sites and international field schools in remote areas of Northern Kenya and Tanzania. His research interests focus on early stone tool production patterns and the earliest evidence for cultural transmission in human evolution. Growing up in Paso Robles, California, Jay also has a 21-year history of working and teaching on Santa Cruz Island. As the Director of the Santa Cruz Island Reserve, Jay is responsible for facilitating the research, educational, and outreach programs for the Santa Cruz Island Reserve. He lives on Santa Cruz Island and, on the mainland, in the Santa Ynez Valley. His partner, Sarah, and 6-year-old daughter, Norah, both love the islands and the adventure that comes with them and they have embraced this new adventure as a family.

Jessica Rykken is currently an entomologist at Denali National Park. Jessica received a BA in Biology from Smith College in Massachusetts, an MS in the Field Naturalist Program at the University of Vermont, and a PhD in Entomology from Oregon State University. Over the last 15 years, she has worked on arthropod inventory projects in many national parks, from Boston Harbor Islands to Gates of the Arctic. As part of this work, she is dedicated to sharing her passion for the bizarre and beautiful creatures that "run the world" with a wide diversity of audiences.

Becky Nichols has been an entomologist at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina since 1997. Her primary responsibilities are to implement the monitoring program for aquatic macroinvertebrates in the parks’ numerous streams, and to help coordinate the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI), which is an effort to identify all species in the park. Becky is originally from Spokane, WA and has a BS degree in wildlife biology from Washington State University, an MS degree in entomology from Texas Tech University, and a PhD in entomology from the University of Missouri.

I am an assistant professor in Biology at Cal State San Bernardino. I received my Ph.D. in Ecology from the Joint-Doctoral Program at UC Davis and San Diego State University. I hold a Bachelor's degree in Biology and a minor in Spanish from Cal Poly State University San Luis Obipso. My lab takes an integrative approach in understanding animal-habitat interactions in a changing world. We answer questions regarding if animals can respond appropriately, how they accomplish this, and why some are better than others at dealing with rapid environmental change. We use community science (also called citizen science), field studies of wild populations, and laboratory work to quantify phenotypic and genetic responses. Overall, output from the lab has informed the conservation and management of wildlife in human-dominated habitats.