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One of the conceptual bottlenecks of ecology is posed by the multitude of interacting components and factors such as individuals, populations, habitat patches, abiotic resources, disturbances, and others, affecting or expressed in any single community or ecosystem. We are interested in analytical and synthetic approaches to such complex ecological systems, with special focus on aquatic habitats and their fauna. Specific areas of research include:
1. Synthetic ecology: through designing and building artificial ecosystems with a diversity of species and trophic configurations we aim at exposing ecosystem/community features that promote stability, productivity as well as species diversity. This works is inspired by and expands on the popular food growing industry of aquaponics, waste water cleanup, and constructed wetlands.
2 . Organization and structure of aquatic communities as a function of spatial and temporal scale and habitat heterogeneity. Much of the field work is being conducted at a site in Jamaica and include experimentation of rock pool communities (picture above) and coral reef fish.
3. Application of hierarchy theory to multispecies systems such as communities in lakes or rivers Here, we treat habitat as a hierarchically structured mosaic of subunits in order to explain and predict patterns in species distribution and abundance. The work involves quantitative analysis of benthic invertebrates in the littoral zone of Lake Ontario (Hamilton Harbour and Cootes Paradise) and rock pool communities (Jamaica) under natural and experimental settings.
4. Nature, sources, and connections among various forms of ecological variability and regularities it displays. This part of recent research uses laboratory microcosms, field manipulations, and large public domain data sets (e.g, satellite imagery, UN data bases).
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