Research Interests (scroll down for current projects)
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Research within the Atkinson lab tests long-standing questions in ecology such as linkages between community structure and ecosystem function, food web structure and dynamics, landscape scale patterns dictating community assembly, and the importance of interactions between ecology and evolution for community and ecosystem processes.
Work in the Atkinson lab employs experimental, field, geographic information systems, and data synthesis to link organismal rates to ecosystems. My lab's research spans the influence of hydrologic patterns and landscape patterns on community assembly, resource availability, feeding roles of invertebrates, nutrient cycling, invasive species interactions, and the impacts of land use on water chemistry. Research in the lab particularly focuses on the role of organisms in maintaining vital ecosystem processes and how environmental change may interact to influence these processes. Topics of greatest in the Atkinson lab include:
1) Linking resource use and stoichiometry of aquatic organisms to ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycles.
2) Role of organisms as biogeomorphic agents in aquatic ecosystems
3) Species assemblage structure, biodiversity, and species functional traits and effect traits
4) Energy dynamics in food webs and trophic ecology
5) Terrestrial-aquatic linkages in geographically isolated wetlands.
Here are some recent highlights of work in the lab:
Alabama Water Institute News
Birmingham NPR
Work in the Atkinson lab employs experimental, field, geographic information systems, and data synthesis to link organismal rates to ecosystems. My lab's research spans the influence of hydrologic patterns and landscape patterns on community assembly, resource availability, feeding roles of invertebrates, nutrient cycling, invasive species interactions, and the impacts of land use on water chemistry. Research in the lab particularly focuses on the role of organisms in maintaining vital ecosystem processes and how environmental change may interact to influence these processes. Topics of greatest in the Atkinson lab include:
1) Linking resource use and stoichiometry of aquatic organisms to ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycles.
2) Role of organisms as biogeomorphic agents in aquatic ecosystems
3) Species assemblage structure, biodiversity, and species functional traits and effect traits
4) Energy dynamics in food webs and trophic ecology
5) Terrestrial-aquatic linkages in geographically isolated wetlands.
Here are some recent highlights of work in the lab:
Alabama Water Institute News
Birmingham NPR
Current Lab Projects and Collaborations
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