People

I expect my students to develop a broad perspective on ecology and evolution, to engage in research rooted solidly in empiricism but with an eye toward its wider theoretical and practical implications, and to maintain a healthy knowledge of natural history. I particularly encourage applications from students with interests in marine or aquatic ecology.

Past and current students and post-docs in the lab have studied a variety of topics loosely related to my conceptual interests.  These include:

 

Jon Chase:  Size structured interactions and alternative stable states in pond food webs along a productivity gradient.

Jean Tsao:  Lyme disease dynamics and management in an ecological community context.

Amy Downing:  Experimental studies of biodiversity and ecosystem function in multi-trophic pond ecosystems.

Kevin Britton-Simmons:  Population dynamics and community impacts of an invasive brown algae, Sargassum muticum, in Puget Sound.

Pamela Geddes:  Impacts and mechanisms of action of dissolved organic carbon derived from external leaf subsidies in pond ecosystems.

Doug Nutter:  Multi-trophic species-area relationships, and the effects of disturbance and stress in experimental tidepool communities.

Lis Nelis:  Food-web consequences of species invasions, particularly the synergistic interactions of multiple invaders on a remote Chilean island.

Mark Novak:  Interaction strength estimates and impacts of omnivory in New Zealand intertidal communities along a productivity gradient.

Michael Fitzsimons: Feedback and species coexistence of mycorrhizae and plants in prairies.

Aaron Kandur: Determinants of range limits at multiple scales.  Use of neural networks to characterize community interactions.

Will Tyburczy:  Effects of discordant time-scales on ecological dynamics.

Sebastian Heilpern:  Process catalyzers in ecosystems.

Kristen Jenkins Voorhies:  Palaeoecological perspectives on environmental change.

Sara Jackrel:  Effects of individual trait variation across ecosystem boundaries.

Elizabeth Sander:  Food web dynamics modeling.

Amy Henry:  Disease, disturbance and alternative states.

John Park:  Effects of temporal variability on life history and species coexistence.

Daniel Smith:  Theory of local interactions and species coexistence.

POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWS/RESEARCH ASSOCIATES

 Handojo Kusumo:  Genetic structure and dynamics of experimental kelp populations.  Microsatellite and AFLP methods. Currently at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

James Forester (post-doc in the Center for Integrating Statistics and the Environmental Sciences [CISES]):  Landscape ecology of elk-wolf-habitat interactions.  Methods for parameterizing multi-species models from community dynamics data.  Analysis of spatial association. Models of movement in juvenile salmon.  Currently at the University of Minnesota

Dylan Maddox:  Ecological/evolutionary consequences of avian invasion.  Dynamic macroecology.  Currently at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Matthew Helmus (NSF Bioinformatics post-doc):  Phylogenetic signals in interaction strength and food web structure.  Currently at Temple University.

A list of undergraduate researchers in the lab and where they are now can be found on this page