Research Topics

Benthic ecology, population and community dynamics.

I am a quantitative field ecologist interested in the patterns and drivers of populations and communities in space and time.  My primary research areas have involved: 1) linking age structure, growth, other demographic, physiological, and life history characteristics of species to varying environmental conditions, 2) determining the effects of suspension feeders on trophic structure in shallow embayments, and 3) relating community structure in space and time to major environmental factors, including those associated with climate.  The populations and communities I study are primarily benthic, but there are exceptions (e.g., giant squid, white perch).  My research is inherently interdisciplinary and collaborative, and I especially enjoy developing and addressing questions with colleagues in a variety of disciplines (e.g., fisheries ecology, geology, physiological ecology, plankton ecology, archaeology).  My interest is to investigate natural biotic systems at realistic spatial and temporal scales, an approach that usually requires extensive field and laboratory work.

Currently and on the horizon over the next few years are several projects to utilize or generate data sets with rich spatial-temporal resolution.  The goal is to assess the vulnerability of species, trophic interactions, and communities with respect to stressors ranging from eutrophication, habitat alteration, and overfishing to climate change.  These projects are utilizing a variety of emerging field and lab techniques (e.g., fine-scale acoustic telemetry, stable isotopes), modelling (e.g., state-space), and multivariate statistical analyses (e.g., spatial-temporal direct analyses).