Biotic Interactions & Climate
Project 1: warmXtrophic: Herbivory & Warming in Early Successional Fields
We are interested in understanding how biotic interactions and climate change directly and indirectly affect community structure and function. In particular, we are interested in how competition and herbivory interact with warming to affect early successional field community composition, phenology, and plant traits in Michigan.
|
Project 2: Multi-species distribution modelingSpecies distribution models (SDMs) provide a means for forecasting species' distributions in space - both now and in the future during climate change. However, such correlative approaches commonly leave out biotic interactions and treat species individually. We incorporate biotic interactions among eastern hemlock, elongate hemlock scale, and hemlock woolly-adelgid, into multi-species (joint) distribution models with ordinal data. Biotic interaction strength can change depending on environmental context; we illustrate an approach to incorporating context dependency into SDMs with barnacles, mussels, and seastars in the Pacific Northwest rocky intertidal system.
A grant from the State of Michigan Invasive Species Grant Program focused on the recent invasion of hemlock woolly adelgid to Michigan, with the goals of (1) mapping current distributions of hemlock and hemlock woolly adelgid, and (2) forecasting the future spread of adelgid across the state based on cold tolerance and hemlock landscape connectivity.
|
Project 3: Climate and functional trait-mediated species interactions
Foraging traits could alter the strength of direct and indirect effects of climate warming. We are using microcosm experiments, in situ field experiments, and field surveys of ponds in southwestern Michigan to understand how rising temperatures will interact with predator foraging strategy to alter predator-prey interactions of freshwater invertebrates. We are using experimental results to parameterize mathematical population models forecasting how changing predator-prey interactions may alter invertebrate populations and the structure of freshwater food webs under different RCP climate change scenarios. With funding from NASA (NESSF), we are working to scale up these results to continental scales with the aquaXterra project described above.
|
Project 4: Arctic freshwater fish communities
We are using multivariate autoregressive models to investigate how freshwater fish body condition has changed in response to climate and biotic interactions over 30 years in Arctic lakes. Species include: lake trout, Arctic grayling, round whitefish, slimy sculpin, and burbot.
|