Assistant Professor
About
Academic Background
I received my PhD from North Carolina State University in 2011 studying the biogeography of carnivores and their parasites. From 2012-2013, I was a NSF and Chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow in the Environmental Science, Policy and Management Department at University of California, Berkeley. Most recently, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Luc Hoffmann Institute, WWF International (2014-2015).
Research Interests
Overview
A fundamental theme in ecology aims to elucidate the mechanisms promoting and threatening species persistence. The geographic ranges of species are discrete and contiguous, but not static or trophically-independent. Instead, species are respondent to environmental and anthropogenic perturbations, and can have cascading effects on affiliate species. The combination of conditions and species distributions comprise ecological communities that are spatially heterogeneous. The principle goal of my research program is to understand the biogeography of ecological communities by answering three leading questions. 1) What abiotic and biotic factors delimit species ranges including those of conservation and human concern? 2) How are species interactions distributed across temporal and spatial scales? 3) What are the consequences of extirpations (or expansions) on communities? To answer these questions, past and ongoing projects incorporate biogeochemistry, genetics, species distribution modeling, community and population simulations, animal capture and telemetry, parasitology, and non-invasive monitoring within mammal systems. Ultimately, discerning the plasticity of ecological associations is necessary to inform the vulnerability of species to external threats, and identify integral processes that promote biodiversity and community viability.
Focal research areas
1. Spatial variation in species interactions: The presence of a species implicitly represents the interactions they either maintain or those that they require themselves for persistence. We explicitly incorporate these species interactions to improve our understanding of diversity, distribution, and demography. The interactions on which we focus, both in Africa and North America, are namely antagonistic associations – spatial patterns in prey consumption and host-parasite systems to identify endemic interactions that warrant conservation attention.
Such investigations will also begin to inform the biotic conditions that constraint the geographic distributions of species.
2. Ecological consequences of species loss: Extinctions rarely occur in isolation. Instead, the loss of one species can cascade to the loss of an affiliate (i.e., coextinction). Trophic cascades in mammalian, predator-prey systems are well studied, but predictable responses of species loss for other trophic interactions is less conspicuous. Since 2008, we have been examining the theoretical framework and modelling approaches for coextinction with synthesis projects. We have extended these theoretical predictions to investigate the pervasiveness of coextinction empirically by sampling the parasite communities for species of conservation concern – assuming coendangerment is the precursor to coextinction. Experimentation is the next step to understanding coextinction risks and compensatory mechanisms within communities; for which animal exclusion and parasite removals will prove useful in informing how the local species pool influences community dynamics and niche expansion.
3. Interaction networks: Species occur in complex food webs, forming dynamic communities with many interactions. While some species occur across trophic levels, others exhibit seemingly restricted patterns of utilization and affiliation. Much research has explored the conditions that generate community similarity including guild, phylogeny and sympatry. Expanding beyond host-parasite interactions within a single trophic level, my research program explores how networks are structured, affiliates and community similarity across trophic levels, and the environmental conditions that govern their occurrence. Developing projects include investigating communities of: 1) small mammal –ectoparasites—microbes within both host and parasites; and 2) mammalian carnivores—ungulates—microbes within both predator and prey.
Research Areas(s)
- Conservation biology, wildlife ecology, biogeography, community ecology, population ecology, host-parasite interactions, global change biology
Graduate Students
- Shawn Colborn, Corbin Kuntze
