Courtney is interested in how large herbivores impact biodiversity and ecosystem processes, with a current focus on the impacts of large herbivores on savanna vegetation structure. Her work seeks to identify cryptic ecological functions that are lost due to large herbivore extirpation and to quantify the impacts of these losses on savanna nutrient cycling and landscape structure. Courtney earned her PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology from Brown University and completed a previous postdoctoral at UCSB.