Dr. Aramee Diethelm is an ecologist whose research examines how environmental conditions shape plant traits, particularly secondary chemistry, and interactions among plants, insects, and their natural enemies. Her work combines observational studies, field and greenhouse experiments, plant chemical analyses, and quantitative methods to investigate how plants respond to environmental stress and how host-plant traits and natural enemies influence herbivore behavior and performance.
From 2023 to 2026, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the
Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where she led the California and Nevada components of a multi-partner study of western monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) breeding ecology. She coordinated standardized field surveys and integrated and analyzed multi-region survey data to investigate spatial and temporal patterns of reproduction across the western breeding range. She also co-led a National Park Service pollinator inventory focused on monarch butterflies and bumble bees (Bombus spp.).
She earned her PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno, working in Dr. Elizabeth Pringle’s lab. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, her doctoral research examined how water limitation and herbivory shape milkweed chemistry across environmental gradients, how water availability affects monarch oviposition preferences, and how host-plant identity and predator exposure influence larval development and survival. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Ecology, Ecological Entomology, and Ecosphere.
Alongside her research, Aramee has designed and taught undergraduate ecology as Instructor of Record at UC Davis and mentored 15 undergraduate researchers, including students completing independent research projects and honors theses. Building on her doctoral and postdoctoral work, she aims to understand how environmentally driven variation in plant traits, including defensive chemistry, shapes insect interactions and when these effects scale up to broader demographic and spatial patterns.
MY LATEST RESEARCH
My postdoctoral research examined the seasonal timing of western monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) breeding across the western United States and how females use different milkweed species for egg laying within individual sites. At UC Davis (2023–2026), I led the California and Nevada components of a Department of War-funded, multi-partner study investigating these patterns. I developed and refined standardized field protocols, coordinated surveys across public and military lands, and curated, integrated, and analyzed multi-year survey data from six regions across the full breeding range. These analyses revealed substantial overlap among regional breeding seasons, challenging the longstanding successive-broods model of northward recolonization. At the site level, I also examined how monarchs use co-occurring milkweed species for reproduction, finding that host-plant availability alone does not explain patterns of oviposition across sites and seasons.
Previously, during my PhD at the University of Nevada, Reno, as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, I investigated how environmental stress, climatic history, and herbivory shape the traits and secondary chemistry of milkweeds (Asclepias spp.), and how host-plant characteristics and natural enemies affect monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) behavior and performance. I combined regional surveys of milkweed populations across the Great Basin with multi-year common-garden experiments across a climatic gradient, manipulations of water availability and herbivore damage, and analyses of plant secondary chemistry. This work showed that climatic history influences milkweed phytochemical responses to water limitation and that herbivory can disrupt geographic patterns in plant drought responses. In complementary experiments, I found that female monarchs laid more eggs on water-limited plants and that the effects of predator exposure on larval development and survival differed among host-plant species.