June 1, 2026
Elizabeth Oliver is a scientist in David Johnson’s lab at William & Mary’s Batten School & Virginia Institute of Marine Science, where she studies how climate change-driven range expansions are reshaping salt marsh ecosystems. Her work focuses on the fiddler crab, Minuca pugnax, a species whose northward expansion has raised new ecological questions for marshes along the Atlantic coast. Elizabeth joined the Johnson lab this past summer for fieldwork at the Plum Island Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research site, where she gained first-hand experience of the Great Marsh and the community PIE brings into research. Over the course of the season, she conducted surveys of fiddler crab burrow density and occupancy using an endoscope affectionately known as the “burrow scope” to document how crabs are using the marsh landscape.
Before beginning her graduate studies, Elizabeth interned at the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in New Hampshire, where she also investigated fiddler crab burrow density and occupancy patterns. During that time, she assisted with broader estuarine monitoring programs, contributing to surveys of blue crabs, horseshoe crabs, and lobsters throughout the systems. A fun fact about that summer is that she got to hold osprey fledglings as they got banded. These experiences helped shape her interest in how shifting species distributions influence coastal habitats.
Being a recipient of the NSF GRFP award will provide Elizabeth the opportunity to devote research towards understanding impacts of range expansions on ecosystem dynamics and differences between expanded and historical populations. Looking ahead, her research will examine how expanding fiddler crab populations affect marsh sediment and plant carbon storage as well as overall marsh stability. She also plans to investigate the lower thermal limits of M. pugnax and explore how their burrows may serve as thermal refuges in newly colonized habitats. This work will continue at the PIE LTER site, where she will also help mentor an undergraduate William & Mary student completing her honors thesis. She will join Elizabeth in the field this summer as they carry out the next phase of this research.
Left: Elizabeth Oliver holding a female fiddler crab at PIE. Right: Elizabeth setting up cages in the salt marshes of Virginia. Photo credit: David Johnson.