Biodiversity Modeling Research
Species Distributions
How to calculate the distribution of a species and what factors determine it.
Biodiversity Patterns
Individual species distributions can be stacked to create so called Presence-Absence Matrices, or PAMS. The properties of PAMs are very revealling of the biodiversity pattern
Biodiversity Policy
How it is that biodiversity policy is informed by science and knowledge.
What? Much of the work is done using mathematical modeling and numerical analysis of large specimen databases. We use GIS, R and Mathematica as the main tools.
Where? We concentrate our studies in the Western Hemisphere, but sometimes we focus in North America in a geographical sense (i.e., beginning in Panama). Other times we look at the entire world. The lab is driven by questions, more than taxa or regions.
Why? Studying areas of distribution is of fundamental biological importance. Areas of distribution are at the core of biogeography, macroecology and evolution. They are also extremely important from a practical point of view.
Who? The primary investigator (PI), students and post-docs work in the division.