My name is Eden, I'm a post-doctoral researcher at the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory. I make and use modeling tools for cognitive and community ecologists alike to study the coupling of organismal behavior and community structure.

Brain-Body-Environment (BBE) models as a data source for behavior and ecology

Agent-based models that explicitly account for the dynamics of nervous systems, physiology, and environmental dynamics allow for rigorous accounts of behavior. These models can also be used as a data source for ecological phenomena that are hard to capture in the field. I work on evolving behavioral solutions certain ecological conditions to generate that data. I also build tools for examining both behavioral and ecological consequences of those evolved solutions.

Tracing stability in ecological models

Simple models of differential equations dominate theoretical ecology. However, tracing causality in those models has been difficult. I have been working to develop methods for tracing the specific feedback loops through which certain ecological phenomena - namely stability and instability that leads to oscillations, alternative stable states, and chaos - are realized. As such, the consequences of certain assumptions about species traits or their trophic interactions can be discussed causally rather than descriptively.

The role of perception in trophic interactions

Organismal perception is one of the first features to be abstracted away in many ecological models. I'm interested In explicit accounts of certain perceptual modalities, how they alter expectations about trophic interactions, and their downstream effects on ecological dynamics and regimes.

Modeling freshwater benthic food webs

Modeling need not be only used for theory. I apply my modeling skills to the study of benthic food webs in freshwater lakes, in particular the natural behavior of benthic forage fish (sculpins, gobies) and biological invasions in benthic habitats (gobies, Dreissena).

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