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Expertise
- Biological — Aquatic Invertebrate — Community structures and dynamics
- Biological — Microbial — Community structures and dynamics
- Biological — Aquatic Invertebrate — Population dynamics and monitoring
- Biological — Invasive Species — Monitoring / Detection
- High-throughput amplicon-based and metagenomic sequencing of entire environmental microbial communties
Education / Outreach Target Audience
- Bachelors students
- Masters / PhD students
Professional Focus
The research in my lab centers on using ecological theory to explore interactions between entire microbial communities and individual insects, populations or entire communities of insects. My lab is combining insect community and ecosystem ecology with next-generation high throughput sequencing technologies to better understand the insect microbiome and how this community of microbes mediates insect fitness and community dynamics. By harnessing a deeper understanding of this traditional \"black box\" of insect ecology, my students, collaborators and I are uncovering new insights into aquatic and semi-aquatic insect population biology and community ecology that has substantial ecosystem level effects important to disease ecology theory and human and environmental health. My lab also has a nationally funded research project modeling the postmortem human microbiome - the microbial communities of human cadavers after death - for applications in forensic sciences, human medicine and environmental monitoring.
Unique Field / Laboratory Capacities
- Laboratory processing of DNA extractions and high-throughput amplicon-based and metagenomic sequencing of entire environmental microbial communties
- Aquatic invertebrate identification and biomonitoring
- Forensic entomology and Forensic microbiology
Additional Documents
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