University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Population and community ecology seeks to understand the complex dynamics and spatial patterning of populations and of entire assemblages of multiple species across diverse environments and regions. Approaches include theoretical explorations along with experimental and observational studies at scales from laboratory flasks to entire regions of the globe.

• Robyn Burnham:
  • Robyn Burnham studies the high diversity tropical forests of Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, identifying the dominant species in liana communities across the Amazon Basin, and determines the traits that predispose climbing species to proliferate under forest alterations.
• Vincent Denef:
  • Vincent Denef uses metagenomic and metaproteomic approaches to gather an improved understanding of microbial population dynamics and community functioning within ecosystem context. He is particularly interested in the connection between genomic variation and altered ecological behavior, and how short- and long-term environmental change can drive both. While he has been studying these concepts in systems ranging from abandoned mines to the human gastrointestinal tract, he is currently focusing on freshwater systems such as the Laurentian Great Lakes.
• Thomas Duda:
  • Thomas Duda investigates the processes associated with ecological diversification. This work includes field and laboratory studies that involve analyses of feeding ecology, phylogenetics and phylogeography, and molecular investigations of the evolution of venoms of members of the predatory, marine gastropod genus Conus.
• Paul Dunlap:
  • Paul Dunlap's research investigates the inception and development of species-specific symbioses between light-emitting bacteria and teleost fish. Laboratory studies examine symbiont-host interactions from the bacterial genetic, physiological, and genomic perspectives, field work addresses the behavioral ecology of the fish and population ecology of the bacteria, and mariculture studies focus on the developmental and reproductive biology of the fish.
• Deborah Goldberg:
  • Deborah Goldberg's research focuses on the mechanisms and consequences of community dynamics, including mechanisms of invasion and coexistence, plant-soil feedbacks, ecology of clonal plants, community and ecosystem response to climate change, and ecology of the human microbiome.
• Mark Hunter:
  • Mark Hunter's research interests include plant-animal interactions, ecosystem ecology, biodiversity and population dynamics. His research links population processes with ecosystem processes in terrestrial environments and explores the mitigation of global environmental change.
• Inés Ibáñez:
  • Inés Ibáñez's research interests are in plant community ecology, climate change and invasive species.
• Aaron King:
  • Aaron King's research focuses primarily on the ecology and evolution of infectious disease. His research also includes modeling specific systems, analyzing models and data using sophisticated mathematical, computational and statistical tools, and developing general methods to advance theoretical ecology and evolutionary biology.
• L. Lacey Knowles:
  • Lacey Knowles' research interests are in speciation, phylogeography and evolutionary radiations.
• Annette Ostling:
  • Annette Ostling's research explores niche versus neutral structure in population and communities, linking functional trait diversity with coexistence mechanisms, especially in forests. She also studies the robustness of coexistence and limits to similarity, the role of competitive interactions in range shifts under climate change, macroecological patterns and the influence of spatial structure on the evolution of species interactions and communities. Her interests also include the impacts of spatial structure on the evolution of pathogen transmission and virulence.
• Mercedes Pascual:
  • Mercedes Pascual's research interests are in theoretical ecology and disease ecology.
• Daniel L. Rabosky:
  • Daniel Rabosky studies macroevolution, speciation, and evolutionary community ecology. He is especially interested in how ecological factors influence the processes of speciation, extinction, and trait evolution through time and space. His research includes field-based studies of ecological diversification in Australian reptiles, molecular phylogenetics, and mathematical and computer modeling of evolutionary dynamics in a broad range of taxonomic groups. (Joins U-M EEB Sept. 2012)
• Pejman Rohani:
  • Pejman Rohani studies population biology of host-natural enemy interactions. His research primarily focuses on the ecology and evolution of host-pathogen systems, using mathematical and statistical approaches to understand and explain empirical observations and make policy predictions.
• John Vandermeer:
  • John Vandermeer's lab engages in two related classes of research – the structure and function of tropical agroecosystems and the ecological theory of complex systems as applied to agroecosystems generally. Work in tropical agroecosystems is mainly concerned with organic coffee production, focusing on a model system of pest control in a large production facility in southern Mexico. Theoretical work focuses on spatial self-organization and its consequences for the structure of ecological networks.
• Earl Werner:
  • Earl Werner's interest focuses on the nature of species interactions and the consequences of these interactions within the structure of ecological communities. His research utilizes larval amphibian communities as a model system for experimental work. He also studies the cross-scale interactions influencing dynamics of amphibian and macroinvertebrate meta-communities based on a long-term data series collected from 37 ponds on the University's E. S. George Reserve.
• Donald Zak:
  • Donald Zak's work draws on ecology, microbiology, and biochemistry and is focused at several scales of understanding, ranging from the molecular to the ecosystem scale. Current research centers on understanding the link between plant and microbial activity within terrestrial ecosystems, and the influence climate change may have on these dynamics. Teaching includes courses in soil ecology and ecosystem ecology.

Italics = secondary appointment in EEB, can serve as graduate co-chair only