Forest ecology

I am interested in successional dynamics in oak-hickory forests. Many such forests in eastern North America are under rapid successional change as the oak canopy is replaced by individuals of more mesophytic species. There are multiple hypotheses for the driver of this change: fire suppression, decreasing severity and prevalence of drought, or changes to herbivore communities. Most of this work takes place in a 23-ha forest dynamics plot in Pinckney, MI. This plot is part of the Smithsonian Institution’s ForestGEO global network of forest research plots. As such data from this plot are part of large collaborative studies on other aspects of forest ecology. Data from the three censuses of this plot are publicly available here. For more information on this plot see this paper.

Ecology of tick-borne diseases

I am also interested in the abiotic and biotic drivers of tick-borne disease prevalence. For this project I largely focus on Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease agent, in Ixodes scapularis, the blacklegged tick. I take a joint empirical-theoretical approach for this project. I am developing a model which predicts enzootic persistence of a tick-borne disease in a given abiotic and biotic context. Then I will parameterize the model with field-collected and literature values. If the model is successfully validated, it will be interrogated to better understand the drivers of disease persistence. This ongoing work takes place in Addison County, Vermont.