Bill Fagan
Professor, Department of Biology
University of Maryland
Head Honcho
Ph.D., 1996, University of Washington
| Address: | 3235 Biology-Psychology Building University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 |
| Phone: | 301-405-4672 |
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Research
My research involves meshing field research with theoretical models to address critical questions in community ecology and conservation biology. I believe that ecological theory will be strengthened if it is forced to help solve real-world problems, and that conservation biology involves difficult choices that demand quantitative approaches.
Several ongoing research areas illustrate this melding of theory and problem solving:
Spatial Ecology
To understand the complex ecological consequences of habitat fragmentation, I combine mathematical theory with empirical databases and/or field experiments to explore how landscape heterogeneity and patchiness can influence population and community dynamics. My interests in this area are diverse, including such issues as spatial subsidies, species’ home ranges and migratory movements, spatial aspects of successional change, and edge-mediated effects. Ultimately, I'm interested in how spatial effects influence the assembly, collapse, and functioning of ecological systems, and I try to understand these relationships by working at the interface of data and theory. Research on this topic involves field work in some amazing parts of the world, including the Eastern Steppes of Mongolia, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the starkly beautiful Pumice Plains of Mt. St. Helens, Washington.
Funded Research Projects:
NSF LTREB: “Collaborative Research: Impacts of Insect Herbivory on the Pace and Pattern of Successional Change at Mount St. Helens” with John Bishop and Charlie Crisafulli. My PhD student Chris Castaldo is working on this project. We are focusing on the ways insect herbivores are influencing the ecological recovery of the volcano Mount St. Helens through their impacts on early colonizing plant species (lupines and willows). Previous work by my collaborators and I on the spatial dynamics of recovery at Mount St. Helens was recognized with the Presidential Award from the American Society of Naturalists.
NSF Population Biology: “Collaborative Research: QEIB: Resource Predictability and Dispersal Strategies in Ungulates: Does Temporal Uncertainty Lead to Nomadism?” with Todd Fuller and Peter Leimgruber. My PhD student Thomas Mueller is working on this project. We will use a combination of field studies (satellite collars on Mongolian gazelles) and computational modeling (individual-based neural-network genetic algorithm models) to explore the spatial factors that influence the evolution and persistence of home ranges, nomadism, and migratory movements across taxa.
James S. McDonnell Foundation: “A Complex System Perspective of Transport in River Networks: Implications for Biodiversity and Water-borne Diseases.” with Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe. My postdocs Heather Lynch and Emma Goldberg and my lab associate Evan Grant have contributed to aspects of this project. This project focuses on the ways in which the branching geometry of river networks (as opposed to ‘2-D’ planar landscapes) influences population dynamics, species interactions, and biogeography.
NSF Antarctic Research: Collaborative Research: Multispecies, Multiscale Investigations of Longterm Changes in Penguin & Seabird Populations on the Antarctic Peninsula. My postdoc Heather Lynch is in charge of this project, and several graduate students in my lab travel to Antarctica each year as part of the effort. My graduate student Paula Casanovas is pursuing a dissertation on related topics. We are focusing on the compilation of a biodiversity monitoring database for the Antarctic Peninsula that we will use to evaluate alternative hypotheses for long-term changes in penguin and seabird population sizes. The Oceanites Foundation provides additional support for this project.
Ecoinformatics, biodiversity databases, and conservation planning
To strengthen the science of conservation biology, I work to devise a) quantitative methods for extracting useful biodiversity data from minimalist data sets, and b) mathematical models that assess the adequacy of conservation goals by focusing on the regional dynamics of archetypal, indicator species. An often forgotten key to such models is that they be simple enough that the appropriate data can actually be collected in the field. My interests in the science of conservation are diverse, and I have been involved in projects ranging from reserve planning, to spatial analyses of extinction risk in desert fishes, to time-series analyses of extinction risk, to reviews of endangered species recovery plans. In 2001, I received a Guggenheim Fellowship for support of my research in these areas for a project entitled: “The Weak Data Problem in Conservation Biology.”
Funded Research Projects:
Dept. of Defense SERDP: “An Ecoinformatic Approach to Quantifying Recovery Goals for Endangered Species” with Maile Neel. My postdoc Emma Goldberg and my PhD student Sara Zeigler work on this project. In this project, we are using a database approach to study how conservation knowledge about well-studied species can be used to inform conservation efforts for lesser-known species.
Biological Stoichiometry and Paleoecostoichioproteomics
Biological stoichiometry is the study of the balance of energy and multiple chemical elements in living systems. My previous efforts in this field have involved a) how the balance of major nutrients (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus) differ among arthropod species with different feeding modes, diet breadths, and phylogenetic histories, and b) how allometry, allocation rules, and biogeography combine to influence nutrient content of terrestrial plants. A more recent project has demonstrated striking differences in the use of nitrogen in the proteins of plants and animals. As crazy as the title sounds, many exciting research questions are available in this area.
Funded Research Projects:
NSF Biological Databases and Informatics: “Developing a Bioinformatics Database for Stoichio-Proteomics” with Sudhir Kumar and Jim Elser. My postdoc James Gilbert and my PhD student Holly Martinson are working on this project. In this project, our efforts focus on how ecological constraints, such as nutrient limitation acting over evolutionary time, may have shaped species genomes and proteomes via shifts in the frequency of use of different amino acids.
