Aquatic Ecology

The lab asks both basic and applied aquatic ecology questions in stream and wetland ecosystems.  Recent efforts are focused on testing how organic matter resources from riparian forests affect network linkages among aquatic macroinvertebrate and microbial communities. We conduct field studies with nested manipulation experiments to discover how changing the quality and quantity of organic matter mediates the microbial community ecology of macroinvertebrates at individual, population and community levels of biological organization. Other studies address the role organic matter microbes affect the fitness of aquatic insects.