Aquatic ecology, fish biology, spatial ecology, community ecology, biodiversity, biostatistics, quantitative ecology.
Animals, plants and other organisms vary so enormously that no two places on the planet contain the exact same species or environment. The community quantitative ecology lab seeks to unravel the multiple mechanisms behind these complex patterns that dominate in nature. We carry out large-scale field surveys and utilize experimental, quantitative and theoretical approaches tostudy a central question in ecology: Why are species where they are? To tackle this question, our lab links conceptual and empirical research across a broad number of communities including bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish, insects, mammals and plants. Much as astronomers cannot perform planetary experiments,ecologists cannot easily manipulate most biodiversity patterns, such as species diversity or patterns of species co-existence, because these patterns occur across spatial scales, from a few centimeters to thousands of kilometers. Therefore, in a way similar to astronomers, we use statistical and mathematical models to understand the importance of many processes underlying biodiversity patterns.
