Maron Lab
In general, we are interested in population and community ecology, and most of us focus our research on plant-animal interactions. We are all interested in using population modeling in our projects (to different extents) to help understand how factors that influence individuals may influence population level processes.
I started as a PhD student in 2001. I am interested in terrestrial population- and community-level ecology, especially as they relate to conservation. Part of my research is on zoochorous seed dispersal, a plant-animal interaction considered to be crucial to the maintenance of diversity in tropical forests, in Thailand. I am comparing the functional similarity of three mammalian frugivores, white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar), sambar deer (Cervus unicolor), and muntjac deer (Muntiacus muntjac), with regards to their effects on seed dissemination and seedling demography of the dominant canopy tree Choerospondias axillaris (Anacardiaceae). I am also trying to document patterns of C. axillaris regeneration across national parks where the mammals have been subjected to varying levels of illegal hunting.
A second project I am working on, in collaboration with Dr. Matt Kauffman, is an analysis of the effects of wolf (Canis lupus) reintroduction on the interaction between elk (Cervus elaphus) and aspen (Populus tremuloides) in Yellowstone National Park.
This is my sixth year as a PhD student. I am generally interested in population ecology and am focusing my dissertation research on invasive species. Specifically, I am interested in understanding how exotic plants that often occur at low densities in their native range able to grow at high densities where they are introduced. I am studying a noxious weed invader of western North America, houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale) both in its invasive range in Montana and its native range in central Europe, where I have field sites in eastern Germany. I am using parallel experiments in the native and introduced range to explore whether escape from specialist insect herbivores, small-scale disturbances, and a life history switch from semelparity to iteroparity may contribute to houndstongue's increased success where it is introduced. I am also using data from demographic monitoring of plants in both ranges to parameterize integral projection models. These models will allow me to quantify specific life stages of houndstongue that most limit population growth in each range and, in combination with experimental results, to translate the effects of different factors on performance into effects on population growth.
I started as a PhD student in 2003, with a general interest in species interactions. My dissertation work focuses on how the population dynamics of two long-lived perennial forbs (Lupinus sericeus and Lithospermum ruderale) are affected by small mammal seed predators. I am taking a combined demographic and experimental approach to this question, by monitoring natural populations in order to build population models, and by using rodent exclosures to experimentally examine how small mammal predation affects the seed-to seedling transition rates. This project is based in the Blackfoot Valley in Western Montana, and much of it is in collaboration with John, and his project on the cascading effects of top predators.
I started as a PhD student in fall 2005. Unlike John's other students, I am in the Wildlife Biology Program rather than Biology. I am interested in food web ecology, specifically examining a variety of indirect effects of large ungulates on rodent communities as well as effects on nutrient dynamics. My research takes place in Northern Arizona high-elevation snow melt drainages, where elk herbivory and its effects on vegetation are being quantified.
