Benjamin Gilbert Research

Research

I examine mechanisms that underlie species coexistence and patterns of diversity. I have conducted studies in a number of different ecosystems, ranging from boreal to tropical, and working with study organisms as different as tree seedlings and mosquito larvae. My projects are generally designed to test the roles of environmental adaptation, species interactions, and spatial processes in promoting or reducing species diversity.

I have two long-term research goals. First, I use a combination of empirical and theoretical ecology to clarify many of the mechanisms that allow species to coexist. This knowledge can be used to predict how specific, human-induced changes to ecosystems will impact species' abilities to persist. Second, I believe this basic research will foster an appreciation of the ways in which natural communities are organized, and it is my hope that this appreciation will create more concern for species conservation.

Specific research projects can be seen in my publications, and some of my current research projects are listed below.

	The persistence of native annual metapopulations in a heavily invaded landscape. I am working with Jonathan Levine at the University of California, Santa Barbara to quantify the effect of invasive grasses on native annual plants. Following invasion, native species often have reduced abundances and are restricted to isolated spatial refugia. We are using manipulative experiments, sampling and models to generate predictions about when these changes in abundance and spatial isolation lead to extinction debts in the native flora.

	The effect of changing temperatures on plant-herbivore dynamics. Changing temperatures can have a large impact on the performance of individual species, which in turn scale up to affect species interactions. I am working with Mary O'Connor at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and Chris Brown at the University of Queensland to generate predictions for how temperature affects plant-herbivore dynamics. We are incorporating temperature-dependent metabolic rates into consumer-prey models, and testing the predictions of these models in artificially warmed plankton communities.

	Determining the role of spatial processes in community ecology. Species tend to be clustered in space, often forming distinct 'clumps'. This clumping can be caused by species' adpatations to exogenous factors, such as soil moisture and nutrient availability, or can be caused by endogenous processes, such as limited dispersal. I am working with Joe Bennett at the University of British Columbia to understand how current statistical models that discriminate between these endogenous and exogenous factors work, and when they can inform community ecology.

	The importance of diversity and dominant species in constraining the establishment of new species. Species diversity is generally determined by the number of rare species in a community. Despite a recent focus on whether diversity drives community-level processes, there are many reasons to suspect that the few abundant species in communities might be more important (on a per capita basis) for community-level processes. I am working with Roy Turkington and Diane Srivastava at the University of British Columbia to address this question in a boreal forest understory. This research was recently published (publications).