DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Ecological and evolutionary dynamics in temporally autocorrelated landscapes

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Uncertainty about how species respond to changing environmental conditions is exacerbated by human growth and development, which is increasing the fragmentation of natural landscapes all over the world. This project combines a new theoretical approach to environmental variation in space and time with experimental manipulation of habitat fragmentation to examine extinction risk at large spatial scales. It challenges current understanding of the relationship between environmental variation and extinction risk by providing a more realistic spatio-temporal context for ecological processes. When environmental change is similar, or correlated, among discrete populations that are separated spatially, this change can synchronize population fluctuations, enhancing the risk of extinction. The investigators have recently demonstrated that differences among populations in the degree of environmental correlations reduce population synchrony. This project will test these novel findings using laboratory experiments that vary dispersal rates and environmental dynamics in discrete populations of protists and bacteria. This project will enhance the training of a promising doctoral student. The research also provides unique opportunities for young scientists for cross-disciplinary training in mathematics and experimental ecology through an ongoing after-school program run by the Yale University Peabody Museum. Simultaneously, the doctoral student will gain experience mentoring these younger, incipient researchers. The investigators will also develop an on-line demonstration that uses results from this research to explain the relationships between environmental change and population responses to this change. The demonstration will allow general users to manipulate factors such as growth rate, dispersal rate, and environmental change to understand the effects they have on population dynamics.