Current Lab Members

	Daniel Reuman Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Senior Scientist, Kansas Biological Survey Principal Investigator James S McDonnell Foundation Complex Systems Scholar reuman@ku.edu 785 864 1542 Dan is interested in quantitative approaches to ecological questions, principally community, population, and landscape ecology. He is currently focused on questions of metapopulation and community synchrony.
	Lawrence Sheppard Postdoctoral Researcher lwsheppard@ku.edu Lawrence William Sheppard was an undergraduate at Cambridge University (Natural Sciences) and did his PhD in the Lancaster University Physics Department (Nonlinear and Biomedical Physics). He currently works with Dan, studying population synchrony, in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS), and others worldwide. We are attempting to identify and quantify the synchronising influences in the environment on count and phenological data of aphids, plankton, and fish, as well ongoing projects on cicadas, deer, giant kelp, and other systems, and methods.
	Jasmin Albert Undergraduate researcher pimsupa_jasmin@ku.edu Jasmin is an undergrad at the University of Kansas, and has been working in the Reuman lab since February 2020, on a theoretical project concerning the influence of tail associations between environmental variables on storage effects and species coexistence. Jasmin is a senior majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Environmental Sciences. Her github page.
	Zai Erb Undergraduate researcher erb.isaiah@ku.edu Zai is an undergrad at the University of Kansas, and has been working in the Reuman lab since February 2020, on a project concerning the geography of synchrony of terrestrial vegetation, and especially the influence of topography on that geography. The project uses extremely high-resolution remotely sensed data.

Affiliated postdocs and students

	Daniel R. O’Donnell Postdoctoral Researcher odonnell.380@osu.edu Danny is a postdoc in the Rypel Lab at UC Davis, working on a project involving the movement, including synchronous movement, of freshwater fish in California. The project makes heavy use of telemetry measurements and large dataset analysis. Reuman is a mentor and collaborator on the project. In some of his previous work, Danny studied the dynamics of phytoplankton and zooplankton in Lake Erie and the physical, chemical and biological drivers of those dynamics.
	Scott Colborne Postdoctoral Researcher scolbor@gmail.com Scott is a postdoc in the Rypel Lab at UC Davis, working on a project involving the movement, including synchronous movement, of freshwater fish in California. The project makes heavy use of telemetry measurements and large dataset analysis. Reuman is a mentor and collaborator on the project. In some of his previous, Scott was involved in major telemetry projects for great lakes fish, among other interests.
	Miriam Wanner Undergraduate researcher msw2@virginia.edu Miriam is an undergrad in the Castorani Lab at the University of Virginia, working on a project involving the geography of synchrony of giant kelp populations. Reuman is a mentor and collaborator on the project. Miriam is majoring in computer science and mathematics.

Past postdocs and PhD students

	Shyamolina Ghosh Postdoctoral Researcher ghoshshyamolina89@gmail.com Shyamolina got her PhD in chemistry from the University of Calcutta in 2017. She works with Dan applying the statistical concept of a copula to ecological and environmental datasets of a variety of types. After three years in the Reuman lab, Shyamolina moved on to a postdoc in Switzerland. Shyamolina’s Google Scholar profile
	Lei Zhao Postdoctoral Researcher leizhao@ku.edu Lei is interested in population dynamics in a food web and ecological applications of complex network theory. He is also interested in the effects of warming on aquatic communities. Currently he is working on spatial synchrony and Taylor’s law and the relationship between them. Lei’s recent or ongoing projects include: 1) spatial synchrony of phytoplankton in the California Current, and 2) the determinants of Taylor’s law slopes, as well as some new forms of Taylor’s law. Lei moved on to an associate professor job in Beijing. Lei’s Google Scholar profile Lei’s Researchgate profile
	Tom Anderson Postdoctoral Researcher anderstl@gmail.com Tom obtained a BS from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (Biology), a MS at Murray State University (Water Science), and a PhD from the University of Missouri (Biology). While in the Reuman lab, Tom worked on spatial synchrony and its causes for a variety of taxa, including freshwater plankton, white-tailed deer and amphibians. He also worked collaboratively with Dan, Lawrence Sheppard, and Jon Walter to implement recently developed methods that can test for timescale and geographic structure in patterns of synchrony in these systems. In addition to his work on synchrony, Tom has ongoing field research projects on the population and community ecology of pond-breeding salamanders, the focal organisms of his dissertation work. Tom is now faculty in Illinois. Tom’s website
	Jonathan Walter Postdoctoral Researcher jwalter4@vcu.edu Jon studies space-time patterns in populations and communities, often focusing on insect pests like the gypsy moth. His projects while officially a member of the Reuman lab focussed on geographies of synchrony in a variety of empirical and theoretical settings, and the impacts of climate variability and climate change on insect outbreaks. From the Reuman lab, Jon moved on to independent fellowships and research positions, and still frequently works with members and past members of the Reuman lab. Jon’s website
	Brandon Mechtley Postdoctoral Researcher bmechtley@gmail.com Brandon was broadly interested in the application of signal processing and machine learning to the study of population ecology and studied theoretical models of the propagation of synchrony throughout trophic networks across space at multiple timescales. Prior to working at KU, his background was in applying techniques in multimedia information retrieval and computer music synthesis to the study of acoustic ecology, specifically focusing on the analysis and synthesis of natural soundscapes. Brandon’s website
	Georgina Adams, PhD Biogeography of marine communities: Beyond food webs and the abundance spectrum. Graduated 2015. georgina.adams10@imperial.ac.uk Georgina’s background is in a mix of mathematics, evolutionary biology and ecology. For her PhD, she examined community structure in aquatic systems. Specifically, she studied spatial and temporal trends in size-based metrics of community structure, and the effects of climate and other pressures on body size in those systems. In her spare time she bakes, knits, and explores London. Georgina’s Twitter
	Emma Defriez, PhD Synchrony in marine plankton metapopulations and the effects of climate. Graduated 2016. e.defriez11@imperial.ac.uk Emma’s work focuses on global patterns of metapopulation synchrony of primary producers and changes in synchrony in plankton. She works together with Lawrence Sheppard, and with Chris Reid from the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS). Emma’s analyses have focused so far on the Continuous Plankton Recorder database of SAHFOS, as well as on satellite data on plankton, terrestrial productivity, and environmental variables; as well as on new analytic approaches to synchrony.
	Bernardo Garcia-Carreras, PhD The global effects of climate change on population dynamics. Graduated 2012. Became a permanent researcher at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science. bgarciacarreras@gmail.com Bernardo’s work aims to improve our understanding of how populations respond to anthropogenic environmental changes, and whether these responses generalise across taxa and geographical locations. During his PhD, Bernardo worked on the effects of environmental noise on population dynamics, providing the first empirical link between the “spectral color” of environmental fluctuations and the spectral color of population fluctuations. The “spectral color” of a population or environmental time series is a measure that characterizes its temporal autocorrelation, or year-to-year persistence. Theoretical links had been well studied, but Bernardo’s study was the first empirical evidence in field systems. He also used population models to address the question of whether climate-change-related alterations in means or variances of climate signals are more important for population dynamics. Bernardo’s approach uses simple theoretical and computational models, supported by analyses of relevant case studies, and analysis of large datasets (of, e.g., climate, fishing pressure, population dynamics, and life cycle events). Currently and in the future, Bernardo is using these approaches to help policy makers manage impacts on populations.
	Lawrence Hudson, PhD Unifying food web structure and dynamics with metabolic theory: a general and modular computational approach. Graduated 2012. Became a postdoc at Imperial College London in the lab of Andy Purvis, then moved to the London Natural History Museum with Andy’s lab. He now has a permanent research job at NHM. l.hudson@nhm.ac.uk During his PhD Lawrence examined the relationship between the dynamics and structure of complex, multi-trophic ecological communities. This has historically been a difficult area to investigate because mathematical models of the dynamics of systems of realistic complexity have a large number of unmeasured parameters, and whole-community data are limited and typically comprise only a snapshot or time-averaged picture. The resulting ‘plague of parameters’ means most studies of multi-species population dynamics have been very theoretical. Results are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2013. Lawrence also worked on methods, producing an R package that has seen substantial use in the community; and on the body-mass scaling of field metabolic rates in birds and mammals. Lawrence’s website
	Lisa Signorile, PhD Ecological and genetic determinants of the expansion of grey squirrel populations in Italy and Britain. Graduated 2014. Jointly supervised with Chris Carbone, Jinliang Wang, Peter Lurz, and Sandro Bertolino. lisa.signorile@gmail.com Lisa’s main interests are on the ecology and population genetics of small mammals and other vertebrates. For her PhD she investigated the genetic determinants that promote American grey squirrel invasiveness in Europe, using classic population genetics methodologies. Her results show that low genetic diversity is significantly correlated with reduced propensity to spread, and reduced speed of population range expansion. However, long-distance, human related translocations were the cause for the unabated and fast spread of these mammals in the highly fragmented European landscapes where the species has been introduced. Lisa also has a keen interest in promoting science, and has written books and works as a science writer in Italy to serve this aim, alongside her scientific career. Lisa’s books (in Italian), Il Viaggio e la Necessità, Il Coccodrillo Come Fa and L’orologiaio miope. Lisa’s National Geographic blog (in Italian).
	Julieta Decarre, PhD Diversity and structure of bird and mammal communities in the semiarid Chaco region: response to agricultural practices and landscape alternations. Graduated 2015. Jointly supervised with Chris Carbone, Zoological Society of London. j.decarre10@imperial.ac.uk Julieta’s research focuses on population and community ecology, particularly on the distribution and abundance patterns of wildlife in human modified landscapes. She is interested in understanding how different agricultural practices and anthropogenic changes in land cover may affect bird and mammal persistence. She is a field biologist addressing these questions through comparative and spatial analyses. Her work also aims to improve and implement effective monitoring designs and techniques such as the use of camera traps to monitor mammalian biodiversity. Prior to starting her PhD, Julieta worked for the National Institute of Agricultural Technology of Argentina (INTA). An important part of her work at INTA was to develop strategies and management recommendations to balance trade-offs between food production and conservation needs. Julieta’s INTA website (in Spanish). A video related to Julieta’s work (in Spanish).
	Drew Wilson Former PhD student, joint with Tom Bell, Imperial College London. Drew transferred fully to Tom’s lab when Dan left Imperial.

Past masters students

Present and past undergraduate research students