The Kaspari Lab
Category: geographical ecology
When it comes to invertebrate body size, it’s hard to go big toward the poles
Ecologists have long been fascinated with body size as the “one functional trait that rules them all”. An organism’s body size is just so good at helping us understand how it fits into the rest of the community. Thus an exhaustive dataset on how communities of organisms (e.g., all the birds that occupy a woodlot, all the spiders collected from a single tropical tree) vary as you move from place to place—we’re talking real Geographic Ecology here—has always been a grail for ecologists.
Read MoreNew Paper: Predicting the number of non-native across North America’s insect communities
When walking through a patch of habitat a key question obsesses ecologists: “How many species are there?”. An ornithologist or mammalogist can usually get a number within a reasonable range, in part because those critters are well studied. What happens…
Read MoreBite by bite: why North American herbivores confront such a variable diet
As you travel across North America, grasslands are everywhere, from roadside strips to boundless open prairie. It is easy think of acres of grass and forbs (flowering herbs) as just mouthfuls of forage for local herbivores. Give me a moment…
Read MoreThe Great Diverse North? Flipping the latitudinal gradient.
Every student of Ecology learns that the variety of species declines as you move north or south from the equator. In a new paper led by Dr. Michael Weiser @NEONAnts we show the truth is more delightfully complex. And we…
Read MoreOn the challenge of interpreting Activity Density from NEON’s pitfall arrays
As fossils fuels burn—with all the attendant effects—we are becoming increasingly concerned with how Earth’s insects—the little things that run the world—may be declining. Follow along, and let met tell you about a wee complication toward understanding what’s happening. In…
Read MoreAs ecosystems heat and green, ant abundance and diversity increases; but too much heat and these communities lose colonies and species.
One paradox in the recent flurry of papers reporting insect declines is that insects—ectotherms that rely on external sources of heat—are often predicted to benefit as their environment warms. In an open access paper accepted as a Report in the…
Read MoreToward a MacroEcology of Some of the Little Things that Run the World
Working to develop tech to ID and quantify inverts from NEON’s trap arrays
Read MoreNew PostDoc to study Geographical Ecology of prairie food webs
A new NSF DEB grant to Mike Kaspari and Nate Sanders supports a 3-year postdoc who will join us to explore the Geographical Ecology of invertebrate plant consumers across North American grasslands, meadows, and roadways. Our focus is on the…
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