Recipient of a 5-year NIH/NSF grant to work on the Ecology of Infectious Disease in lowland Amazonia Forest of Peru. The grant is a multidisciplinary effort involving MDs at the University of Texas Medical Branch (Joseph Vinetz) and my laboratory at Texas Tech University. Research will concentrate on the effects of tropical deforestation and fragmentation on the population biology and community ecology of bats, marsupials, and rodents. We wish to understand the effects of altered mammalian host ecology on the prevalence or circulation of leptospirosus, and its consequences to human health. This particular grant will complement ongoing work of a similar nature -- also supported by NIH/NSF and located in lowland Peruvian Amazon-- to examine the effects of deforestation and fragmentation on mammalian hosts, mosquito vectors, and arborviruses. This grant, again involving MDs and virologists from UTMB (Scott Weaver and Bob Tesh), has large component addressing health concerns related to human susceptibility to febrile diseases such as malaria, dengue, or Mayaro viruses.
With Bob Waide (LTER Network Office) and Sandy Andelman (NCEAS), I am organizing two working groups at NCEAS this summer. Each focuses on the relationship between ecosystem function and biodiversity and both are supported by an NSF KDI grant. One working group will involve graduate students and their faculty mentors from a variety of universities which offered a distributed graduate course that we designed. The other working group will involve a number of scientists from LTER sites and OBFS sites, as well as theorists, to examine scale-dependent issues regarding the relationship between structure and function in ecological systems.
Graduate Student News:
One of my doctoral students, Chris Bloch, received second place at the Graduate Student Forum at Texas Tech University for his research on snail ecology in the tabonuco forest. The title of his presentation was "Spatial scaling laws, species packing, and biodiversity of terrestrial gastropods".
One of my doctoral students, Richard Stevens, received a post-doctoral fellowship to work at NCEAS after he graduates in the Summer. Prior to his dissertation work in Paraguay, Richard was involved in both snail and bat research in Puerto Rico.
One of my doctoral students, Jeffrey Roberts, successfully defended his dissertation in March. The title of his research was "Nested Subset Analysis: Randomizations with Regard to Placement of Species Versus Individuals". Jeff participated in research on snail ecology at El Verde as part of the LTER program.
One of my past doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows, Stephen Cox, was hired by NCEAS as a full time staff person. He primarily provides statistical and modeling expertise to working groups and visiting scientists at NCEAS. During his undergraduate and graduate years at TTU (1990 to 2000), Steve participated in field research on snail ecology at El Verde. His dissertation research was on the functional ecology of bacterial communities of the LEF including work in dwarf forest, palo colorado forest, tabonuco forest, and pastures.
Recent Publications:
Mittelbach, G.G., C.F. Steiner, K.L. Gross, H.L. Reynolds, S.M. Scheiner, R.B.
Waide, M.R. Willig, and S.I. Dodson. 2001. The relationship between species
richness and productivity depends on scale. Ecology 82:2381-2396.
Stevens, R.D., and M.R. Willig. 2002. Geographical ecology at the community level: perspectives on the diversity of New World bats. Ecology 83:545-560.
Cramer, M.J., M.R. Willig, and C. Jones. 2001. Trachops cirrhosus. Mammalian Species No. 456, Pp. 1-4. American Society of Mammalogists 656:1-4..
Lyons, S.K., and M.R. Willig. 2001. Species richness, latitude, and scale-sensitivity. Ecology 83:47-58.
Cramer, M.J., and M.R. Willig. 2002. The effects of habitat heterogeneity on species diversity: the role of habitat associations. J. Mamm. (In Press)
Andelman, S.A., and M.R. Willig. 2002. Alternative conservation reserve configurations for Paraguayan bats: Considerations of spatial scale. Conservation Biology (In Press).
Willig, M.R. Exploring biodiversity in time and space: profitable directions for mammalogy in the 21st century. 2002. Mastozoologia Neotropical 8:107-109.
Cox, S.B., M.R. Willig, and F.N. Scatena. 2002. Variation in nutrient characteristics of surface soils from the Luquillo Experimental Forest of Puerto Rico: A multivariate perspective. Plant and Soil (In Press).
Willig, M.R., and B.D. Patterson. Patterns of range size, richness, and body size. 2002. Pp. 000-000, in: Bat Ecology (T.H. Kunz and M. Brock Fenton, Eds.). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois (In Press).
Patterson, B.D., M.R. Willig and R.D. Stevens. 2002. Trophic strategies, niche partitioning, and patterns of ecological organization. Pp. 000-000, in: Bat Ecology (T.H. Kunz and M. Brock Fenton, Eds.). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois (In Press).
Jody Potter
Research Technician
Dept of Natural Resources
University of New Hampshire
215 James Hall
Durham, NH 03824
(W) 603-862-2341
(C) 603-512-9981