Research

My research program focuses on improving mechanistic understanding of how the interplay between abiotic environmental variation and biotic interactions influence population and community dynamics. I am interested in explaining how population and community dynamics are structured by dispersal, species interactions (e.g., resource competition), and habitat heterogeneity (e.g., spatiotemporal distributions of resources).

 

1. At the micro-level, I used several microbial systems to test mathematical theories and developed new theory based on the data.
2. At the local-level, I used data collected in the greenhouse, to incorporate  models, such as individual based model, process based model.
3. At the global-scale, I used long-term (>20 years) forest data to understand the role of climate and other factors in driving species shifts in elevational distributions.

Research Areas

• Effects of Dispersal and Heterogeneity on Metapopulations and Metacommunities
• What Drives Exotic Species to Outcompete Natives?