There is much room for improving understanding of the contribution of interspecific interactions, such as competition and predation, to extinction risk. I am looking at the interactions of local native and non-native cladocerans, as well as zooplankton community recovery following removal of non-native fish in Sierra Nevada lakes. I am also working to explain why temporary wetlands at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory are able to support a hyper-diverse zooplankton community.
The work at the Savannah River Ecology lab includes analysis of community structure in an existing medium-term dataset on zooplankton communities. This dataset offers extensive scope for data analysis, complementary experiments and future sampling efforts. See our interactive data website: “http://zooplankton.ecology.uga.edu".