Graduate student Eric Williams is leading work investigating California mammal species and community dynamics over the past 18,000 years. Eric is a mammologist, ecologist, and a biogeographer, with primary research interests in the natural history of mammals, community dynamics and assembly processes, biogeography, and responses to climate change. Currently, he is determining how the velocity of climate change and species dispersal ability combine to influence the amount of range shift that a species will undergo in response to changing climates. He is answering this question using species distribution models, paleoclimate records, and both fossil and modern occurrence data in North America. Eric is also developing projects to determine the factors responsible for mediating community assembly in Californian mammals and to determine if climate change has affected the phylogenetic diversity of small mammals over the last 18,000 years. The first paper from his research was recently submitted and is now in revision.