Population and community ecology, ecological genetics, vertebrate biology. My research takes an evolutionary approach to ecological questions. My areas of interest are population and community ecology and the application of population ecology to issues in conservation. I have worked extensively with experimental studies of food webs in temporary ponds and the ecological genetics of paedomorphosis in salamanders.
Current studies are a broad approach to understanding the ecological interactions across ecotones.
My colleagues and I are studying interactions between species of salamanders that breed in streams and forage on land and species that have direct development and spend their entire life away from freely flowing water. Natural history observations are used to design rigorous experimental studies in arrays of experimental streams and laboratory studies of behavioral mechanisms of interactions among species. Other recent projects at Mountain Lake are an epidemiological study of the American Chestnut and the role of disease in sex determination in Striped Maple. A new project is a large study of the spatial ecology of amphibians that breed in a complex of sinkhole ponds in the Shenandoah Valley. Mark-recapture studies of four species are combined with studies of hydrology, water chemistry and vegetation to account for population dynamics, pond characteristics, and landscape features.