About Devaughn's Work

Devaughn is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley and spent several years working on a variety of field projects involving vertebrate conservation. Devaughn’s research and career goals are shaped by a strong commitment to improving the relationship of human society with the natural environment. Broadly, she is interested in how wildlife is affected by disruptive anthropogenic activities, with the aim of identifying solutions for best practices to mitigate these threats and to make human-need practices more sustainable. Her current research focuses on characterizing the health and dietary responses of bats to pest management strategies in agricultural systems in California. Her goal is to assess the ecological risk for bats foraging across a gradient of insecticide use in order to develop guidelines for growers to maximize bat predation while minimizing the economic and environmental costs of managing insect pests. In addition to her doctoral research, she is enrolled in the Leaders in Sustainability certificate program offered by UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, through which she is building a strong interdisciplinary framework to address the multiple dimensions of human society and economy that influence conservation outcomes. She is also heavily committed to improving sustainability education at the primary and secondary levels by creating a dialogue about the environment that is integrated across subjects and is directly applicable to everyday lives of students. Overall, Devaughn feels that research and education are fundamental components to improving the quality of the environment and human lives in the long term.