Weecology

The historical focus in community ecology on short-term experimental manipulations has resulted in an underappreciation of how dynamic communities and ecosystems actually are. We are interested in using long-term data to better understand how and why natural systems change. In particular, we are interested in how community structure and system-level properties respond to perturbations such as climate shifts, habitat change, and species extinctions or invasions.

Quantitative models allow us to apply the logic and rationality of math and computer science to understand if our view of how ecological systems work is a reasonable one. We are broadly interested in the development and testing of ecological models. Current work focuses on species-area relationships, community dynamics, and metabolic ecology.