As a PhD student, I'm fascinated with the historical and contemporary processes have shaped the distribution of ecological communities in the North American West. This area is home to some of the most biodiverse regions and ecological hotspots, including the California Floristic Province, which is estimated to harbor easily over 20,000 species of plants, animals and fungi. The heterogenous landscape and unique topography is often thought to be responsible for the production of so much of this biodiversity. Given the impacts of habitat modification, climate change and other human-induced factors that species currently endure, understanding these patterns is now more important than ever to fully assess how communities will respond. To answer these question, much of my research integrates methodologies from the fields of phylogeography, biogeography and population and landscape genomics to understand the historical and contemporary processes that shape communities. Moreover, I use a combination of DNA sequences, morphological and environmental data to understand both inter- and intra-specific patterns of genetic variation and divergence across codistributed species. In this region, several important biogeographic patterns have been observed and continue to be of interest to biologists, including an east-west genetic division in many vertebrates, which are often associated with major geographic regions including the Pacific Northwest and Southwestern United States. In other cases, a north-south division has been identified, and is often attributed to major geographic barriers between populations, including mountain ranges or deserts. Often, these patterns are shared among numerous codistributed taxonomic groups, indicating a shared response to historical or contemporary events. However, many species exhibit idiosyncratic patterns, which is proposed to be attributed to life history differences. Knowing what these patterns are is a core mission of my work as a PhD student.