Overview

The focus of the lab is (primarily) on topics related to biodiversity, including quantifying and mapping biodiversity, understanding the drivers of biodiversity patterns and how biodiversity may be impacted by global changes, and working on making these findings relevant for decision makers. Work in the lab is open to any group of organisms, but tends to focus on plants (as they account for most of the biomass on Earth and their traits are primary drivers of terrestrial ecosystem functioning). We practice Open Science and take a highly collaborative and cooperative approach to research.

Research Areas

Biodiversity patterns

We study biodiversity patterns using both top-down and bottom-up approaches. With the top-down approach, we use data science to aggregate and clean existing data to ask questions at large spatial or taxonomic scales. For example, we’ve worked with our collaborators to assess knowledge gaps in plant data and shortfalls in plant conservation assessments, and have shown how database integration can lead to massive improvements in data availability. With the bottom-up approach, we focus on using field observations to understand biodiversity patterns and their correlates. For example, with our collaborators, we’ve worked on understanding environmental correlates of plant traits in China, Norway, Peru, and other locations. We also work on improving how trait-based ecology is done, including better incorporating uncertainty and advocating for best-practices in trait-based ecology.

Conservation

In addition to studying biodiversity patterns themselves, we’re interested in how that knowledge can be applied in a conservation setting. Knowing how biodiversity is distributed, and how it might be changing, is of critical importance for protecting biodiversity (and its contributions to people). For example, we’ve worked with colleagues to understand how climate change may be threatening cactus species and how we can design protected areas in response to species range shifts. We’ve also worked to asssess the impacts of fires on biodiversity in both the Amazon and Australia. We’re also interested in how global change drivers can be used as “unplanned experiments” to test ecological theories, for example testing community assembly theory using bird introductions.

Open Science

Open Science work in the lab includes both work focused on the development and dissemination of Open Science products and work focused on the impacts of Open Science. For example, we participate in the development and maintainance of multiple R packages, including BIEN, TNRS, GNRS, and Wallace 2. In terms of work focused on the impact of Open Science, we’ve published on the importance of Open Science in trait-based ecology, the need to incentivize software developers, and have shown how Open Science can improve citation rates.

Join the lab!

We’re currently looking for Masters students to join the lab. Students should be strongly self-motivated and full of ideas they’re interested in! In particular, we’re looking for students that have an interest in either (or both) of the following approaches: 1) using data wrangling and coding to address large-scale questions, or 2) using field-based methods to address ecological or global-change questions. Email Brian if you’re interested.