Environmental Changes in Trophic Interactions

Trophic interactions, when one organism consumes another, regulate the flow of energy and materials through food webs and ecosystems. Nutritional ecology provides a framework for integrating physiology and ecology to better understand how variation in nutrient intake affects consumer fitness and the role of organisms in food webs. While nutritional ecology has been most frequently used in basic science, this framework can also aid in understanding the connections between physiology and ecology in human-altered ecosystems. Anthropogenic changes in the quantity or chemical content of food items affect the fitness of organisms and can subsequently affect population dynamics or the availability of energy and nutrients to organisms at other trophic levels.

Examples of research questions in this field include:

• How do anthropogenic nutrient inputs alter the nutritional quality of food items (i.e., plants or prey) and subsequently affect consumer fitness and nutrient cycling?
• How does climate change affect the nutritional content of food items (i.e., plants or prey), consumer physiology, and, subsequently, consumer fitness and nutrient cycling?
• How do environmental gradients in disturbance or anthropogenic effects influence the elemental and biochemical content of organisms?

The mentee will have the opportunity to be involved in multiple research projects in nutritional ecology including basic and applied research on physiology and ecology to better understand the consequences of anthropogenic effects for food webs and ecosystems. Research in our laboratory includes measuring: animal behavior, life history traits of plants or animals (e.g., growth, reproduction, survival), nutritional content of organisms, digestive efficiency, excreta production, and the abundance or diversity of organism in the field. The mentee will gain experience in the scientific process from designing experiments to completing a research project with the goal of having a manuscript submitted for peer-review by the end of the program.

Network Mentor: Dr. Shawn Wilder