Jelena is interested in drawing parallels between current theories in ecology and evolution, with a focus on adaptive evolution and its effects on community-level processes. She is currently evaluating the possibility that the community assembly process might be governed by both ecological and evolutionary factors, both species sorting via dispersal and local adaptation via in-situ evolution. For this work she is focusing on freshwater zooplankton in Michigan ponds as a study system, but hopes to draw broader conclusions about species assemblages in general. Jelena's major graduate advisor is Mathew Leibold.