JT Miller

I’m a third-year Ph.D. student at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida Co-advised by Pam Soltis, Doug Soltis, and Rob Guralnick. My dissertation builds on my undergraduate research at UC Santa Barbara, where I studied bee diversity across California’s ecoregions. Now, I focus on how the biodiversity of flowering plants and bees is structured across North America’s deserts, and how these taxa are responding to global change. I have particular interest in pollen specialist bees, which are likely more susceptible to changes due to tightly knit host-plant interactions. I am passionate about finding new ways to leverage digitized natural history specimens in modeling biodiversity and global change, aiming to inform conservation efforts on these critical groups.

It may seem unusual that I focus on deserts while being based in Florida, but I chose the Soltis and Guralnick labs for their outstanding mentorship in macro-ecology, evolution, and museum data - all key components in how I view studying global change. When not writing code, I'm typically out trying to enjoy our planet's biodiversity through backpacking, hiking, and scuba diving.

November 2025