Research

Publications are available through Google Scholar or by request

Wetlands of all types

Research in Michigan is focused on interdunal wetlands, a type of coastal wetland found in the low lying areas behind dune ridges along the Lake Michigan coastline, mitigation wetlands, which are created wetlands for the purpose of compensating for unavoidable impacts to other wetlands and riparian ecosystems along the Kalamazoo River. We ask questions about how the aquatic insect, herpetofauna, and fish abundance, distribution and diversity vary across environmental gradients. We build food-webs to dissect the trophic interactions in dynamic wetland systems.

Before arriving in Michigan I studied insect diversity in arid-land streams (yes, not wetlands, but temporary!) with Dr. David Lytle, Food web dynamics of temporary woodland pools, trophic ecology of amphibians, and aquatic-terrestrial energy flow with Dr. Dudley Williams, and environmental disturbance on herpetofaunal communities in semi-tropical wetlands in southeast Louisiana with Dr. Brian Crother and Dr. Cliff Fontenot.

Questions I ponder,

Does hydrologic regime influence taxonomic and functional diversity of freshwater macroinvertebrate communities?

Does the hydroperiod gradient drive processes equally in diverse freshwater ecosystems? Is there ecological congruence?

Is there a link between biodiversity and a food-chain length?

Does community composition influence the magnitude of energy flow across aquatic-terrestrial boundaries?

Do more diverse aquatic habitats have more diverse riparian areas?

Are compensatory wetlands functioning like a natural wetland?

How do dams and river restoration influence food-web structure?