RESEARCH

For my doctoral research, I am working on issues related to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in Chinese grasslands. In particular, I am focusing on measuring functional aspects of plant niches to better predict ecosystem processes such as biomass accumulation. I also am working to better understand the trophic interactions in this system. This project is bein conducted in conjunction with the Institute of Botany in the Chinese Academy of Science; more information here.

My past research has involved investigating the ecophysiology of insect-plant interactions in simulated global climate change conditions, assessing foliar element ratios in plants across the grasslands of China, and testing the potential for chemical communication between angiosperm parasites and their plant hosts. I have a continuing interest in methods for measuring functional diversity, in particular in using dendrogram- and convex hull-based approaches to diversity measurement.

For more information, including materials for a workshop that I teach on the basics of the statistical programming environment R, please see my website.