The Kaspari Lab

Category: Latest Posts


Potassium as a game-changer in prairie food webs

This study suggests why the K and Na in urine may reveal a plant’s hidden super-power in its battle against herbivores.

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All that is green is not nutritious or, The importance of peeing earnestly

The quality of urine is not strain’d
It droppeth as the gentle rain from bison on the lawn beneath.

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Bite 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…

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On 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…

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Introducing “Ecology Stories”

Wisdom begins with the proper naming of things. In this episode of Ecology Stories—written as a resource for science classes—@damotmot and I present an illustrated intro to taxonomy.

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Arts and Sciences

When students are asked to covey a principle of ecology in a work of art, remarkable things happen.

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Toward 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

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The Ten Principles of Ecology

I have been teaching a course called “Principles of Ecology” at OU since 1996. It was a traditional two one-hour lecture, one three-hour lab for most of those years. In 2013, I decided to flip the course, converting the lectures…

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A slightly less paradoxical paradox

The Paradox of Enrichment is not the only outcome when you fertilize

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A short essay on Koechner’s Criterion and its relationship to success in Grad School

Where I coin Koechner’s Criterion and run with it

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