Dynamics of Ecological and Evolutionary Processes Lab is based in 5350 Storer Hall at the Unversity of California, Davis. It is a developing group of people that work on various projects concerning the modeling, analysis, and simulation of ecological and evolutionary processes.
Current DEEP Affiliates
I am actively recruiting graduate students through Population Biology, Ecology, and Applied Mathematics. I also have a few projects for undergraduate research. Contact me if interested.- Post-docs
- Carolina Reigada got her Ph.D. in Zoology with Wesley
Godoy and was a post-doctoral fellow with Marcus de Aguiar in Sao
Paulo, Brazil. She is interested in population ecology and in the link
between large and small-scale ecological interactions in insect
communities. Her research involves the development of theoretical
models in conjunction with experiments or observations in the
field or laboratory.
Recent Publications:- Reigada, C.; Araujo, S.L.B.; Aguiar, M.A.M. 2012. Patch exploitation strategies of parasitoids: The role of sex ratio and forager’s interference in structuring metapopulations. Ecological Modelling, 230:11-2
- Reigada, C.; Aguiar, M.A.M. 2012. Host-parasitoid persistence over variable spatio-temporally susceptible habitats: bottom-up effects of ephemeral resources. Oikos
- Gregory Roth got his Ph.D. with Michel Benaïm at University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and is working on stochastic approximations, set-valued dynamics, random dynamical systems, and evolutionary game theory. He is being sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
- Carolina Reigada got her Ph.D. in Zoology with Wesley
Godoy and was a post-doctoral fellow with Marcus de Aguiar in Sao
Paulo, Brazil. She is interested in population ecology and in the link
between large and small-scale ecological interactions in insect
communities. Her research involves the development of theoretical
models in conjunction with experiments or observations in the
field or laboratory.
- Graduate Students
- Nick Fabina , Ph.D. student, Graduate Group in Population Biology, (2009 - present)
Education: B.S., Economics, B.S., Mathematics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Research Interests: I’m a quantitative ecologist who primarily studies mutualistic or symbiotic communities, but also population dynamics, species interactions, and ecological networks. I’m currently focusing on coral reef communities – the associations between corals and their symbionts, coral population structures and dynamics, and the effects of disturbances – but I also dabble in plant interactions with pollinators and herbivores, conservation of native California dune species, and nearly anything that an enthusiastic collaborator proposes.
Recent Publications:- NS Fabina, HM Putnam, EC Franklin, M Stat, and RD Gates. 2012. Transmission Mode Predicts Specificity and Interaction Patterns in Coral-Symbiodinium Networks. PLoS ONE 7: e44970.
- RT, Gilman, NS Fabina, KC Abbott, and NE Rafferty. 2011. Evolution and persistence of plant-pollinator mutualisms during climate change. Evolutionary Applications, In press.
- NS Fabina, KC Abbott, and RT Gilman. 2010. Sensitivity of plant-pollinator-herbivore communities to changes in phenology. Ecological Modelling. 221: 453-458.
- Bailey
Meeker,Master's student, Graduate Group in Applied Mathematics,
(2009-present)
Education: B.S. Mathematics William Smith College
Research Interests: I'm interested in how spatial and temporal variation in the environment affects the spread of invasive species. I am especially interested in how genetic variation affects the reaction of invasive species to environmental variation. One real world example of this is the spread of goat grass near Lake Berryessa, where evolutionary adaptation has resulted in phenotypes of goat grass that can survive in serpentine soil.
Recent Publications:- Forde, JE, and Meeker, B. 2010. A model of varicella-zoster reactivation. MBE. 7: 765 - 777.
- Matt Meisner, Ph.D. Student, Population Biology Graduate
Group, (2011-Present)
Education B.S. Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Research Interests: I am interested in combining theoretical and empirical approaches to studying population and community ecology, and I am particularly interested in how climate change will affect pest control in agroecosystems.
Recent Publications:- Meisner, MH, Harmon, JP, Harvey, CT, and Ives, AR. 2011. Intraguild predation on the parasitoid Aphidius ervi by the generalist predator Harmonia axyridis: the threat and its avoidance. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata. 138: 193-201.
- Meisner, MH, Harmon, JP, and Ives, AR. 2011. Response of coccinellid larvae to conspecific and heterospecific larval tracks: a mechanism that reduces cannibalism and intraguild predation. Environmental Entomology. 40: 103-110
- Meisner, MH, Harmon, JP, and Ives, AR. 2007. Presence of an unsuitable host diminishes the competitive superiority of an insect parasitoid: a distraction effect. Population Ecology. 49: 347–355.
- Julia Moore, Ph.D. student, Graduate Group in Population Biology, (2011-present)
Education: M.S. Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution, Emory University; B.S. Applied Mathematics, University of Washington
Research Interests: I am interested in the application of mathematical models to study ecological questions relevant to conservation. Specifically, I am interested in the design of reserve systems, and how these systems are impacted by invasive species, climate change, and anthropogenic factors.
Recent Publications:- Moore JL, Liang S, Akullian A, Remais J. Cautioning the use of degree-day models for climate change projections: predicting the future distribution of parasite hosts in the presence of parametric uncertainty, Ecological Applications, in press, 2012.
- Nick Fabina , Ph.D. student, Graduate Group in Population Biology, (2009 - present)
Past DEEP Members
- Post-docs
- Mathieu Faure was a post-doc who works on stochastic approximations, quasi-stationary distributions of randomly-perturbed set-valued dynamics, and replicator processes. Mathieu recently started a faculty job at Groupement de Recherche en Economie Quantitative d’Aix Marseille
- Ryusuke Kon (2007-2008) was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science research fellow from Japan who analyzed the dynamics of host-parasitoid communities and competitive communities with a storage effect. Ryusuke is a tenured Faculty of Engineering at the University of Miyazaki in Japan.
- Peter Ralph was a post-doc working with Graham Coop and myself. He currently has a NIH post-doc at Davis. Check out his publications and research interests at his web page.
- Graduate Students
- Brian Alger (MS 2011 in Applied Mathematics, UCD) worked on the relative roles of the storage effect and the competition-colonization trade-off on coexistence.
- Will Tarantino (MS 2008, VIMS) was co-advised by Emmett Duffy and myself. He studied the effects of adaptive foraging and community assembly on biodiversity and ecosystem processes.
Past Students
Prior to coming to UCD, I had the privledge with working the following students:- Graduate students
- Peter Caldwell (MS 2001, WWU) got a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Washington and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
- Daniel Graber (MS 2001, WWU) is a Mathematics Instructor Skagit Valley Community College.
- Chris Killingstad (MS 2002, WWU) is an instructor at Everett Community College
- Bobby Smith (MS 1999, WWU) works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
- Undergraduate Students
- Evan Saltzman (BS 2008, WM) worked on the evolution of dispersal and is Ph.D. student in OR at GIT.
- Matt Holden (BS 2008, UCD) worked on dispersal in hetergenous environments and is an applied math Ph.D. student at Cornell.
- Adam Carpenter (BS 2008, WM) worked on effects of spatial and temporal heterogeneity on diversity and ecosystem processes.
- Jennifer "Jef" Akst (BS 2004, WM) worked on modeling the evolution of kleptoparasitism and is a Ph.D. in Wade's Lab at University of Indiana.
- Kevin Armstrong (2004) (BS 2004, WM) wrote MatLab code for simulating continuous time Markov chain models of community assembly and is a Ph.D. student in mathematics at University of Maryland.
- Bill Dirks (BS 1999, WWU) did his senior honor project on "Spiking and Oscillation in Neuronal Models" and received a NSF pre-doctoral fellowship in 1999 to attend Cornell as a Ph.D. student in Applied Mathematics.
- Jason Keagy (BS 2003, WM) collaborated with Dan Cristol and myself on the effects of replacing source habitats with sink habitats and is a PhD student at University of Maryland.
- Molly Kelton (BS 2005, Vassar) worked on competition in source-sink environments and is applying for graudate school at San Diego.
- Seth Rittenhouse (BS 2002, WWU) worked on intransititiveis in community assembly and is a Ph.D. student in Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
- Eric Ruggieri (BS 2006, Providence) analyzed the Schoener-Holt-Polis model of intraguild predation and is a Ph.D. student in the applied mathematics program at Brown University.
- Glory Tobiason (BS 2001, WWU) worked on the evolution of consumers competing for two resources, spent two years living on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania, taught math for several years at an alternative high school in Washington DC, and (more to come!)
- Jake Wamsley (BS 2006, WM) studied the effect of spatial heterogeneity on population abundance and persistence and is pursuing a Ph.D. in biochemistry at University of Virginia.
- Melanie Vejdani (BS 2005, WM) analyzed the co-evolution of host-parasitoid interactions in spatially heterogeneous environments.