Kathleen 'Katy' Prudic

Kathleen ‘Katy’ Prudic PhD is an ecologist and entomologist interested in discovering how environmental changes impact wild pollinators and what we can do to help these important animals survive in a quickly changing world.

Prof. Prudic has a passion for wild pollinators, especially butterflies. She is co-director of eButterfly, an online community science platform that harnesses the observations of thousands of butterfly enthusiasts across North America. She combines this butterfly observational data with various sensor and satellite data to unravel a bit how climate change is impacting butterfly survival, reproduction, and plant affiliations. Her research encompasses precision conservation, human-computer networks, and data science working with conservation and management agencies such as US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service and non-profits such as the Tucson Audubon Society and the Hummingbird Monitoring Network.

Her discoveries have been published in as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy, Proceedings of the Royal Society B and Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution and covered by Associated Press, BBC, CBC, National Geographic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

She teaches Sustainable Earth (RNR 150) online, Data in the Wild (WFSC 221) and R Programming in Ecology (RNR 620) for the School of Natural Resources and the Environment.