People
Keith Clay
Biography (PDF)
Research Funding (PDF)
Director, IU Center for Research in Environmental Sciences
Director, IU Research and Teaching Preserve
Instructor, Highlands Biological Station Summer Course: Ecology of Rock Outcrop Communities
Current Lab Members
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Clay Lab Group Photo
Clay Lab Group Photo
Cedar Bluffs Nature Preserve 2010
Left to right.
Back row: Anna Larimer (in red), Marissa Lee, Evie Rynkiewicz (with hat), Dan Johnson, Angie Shelton. Front row: Wes Beaulieu, Keith Clay, Luke Flory, Collin Hobbs (and baby).
Angie Shelton
Angie Shelton
I am broadly interested in research questions within plant ecology and plant-herbivore interactions. My research combines field work, laboratory and greenhouse experiments, and computational modeling.
Previous projects include the interaction between the distribution on chemical defenses in plants and behavior of insect herbivores, and phenotypic plasticity as a mechanism for sessile plants to cope with stochastic and predictable environmental variation. My current projects include the impact of periodical cicada emergences on forest trees (with Keith Clay), developing spatially-explicit predictive models of invasive Japanese stiltgrass using GIS (with Luke Flory and Dan Johnson and others), and examining patterns of plant diversity across different spatial scales (with Heather Reynolds and Karen Haubensak).
Anna Larimer
Anna Larimer
Fungal endophytes and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are common symbionts of most terrestrial plants. Both endophytes and AMF span a continuum of interactions with their hosts ranging from highly mutualistic to highly parasitic. I am interested in this continuum, especially how aspects of the biotic environment influence the nature of an interaction. Currently, I am utilizing a plant-endophyte, plant-AMF system to understand the effects of additional symbionts (having varying interactions) on host plant performance.
Dan Johnson
Dan Johnson
My interests are in the patterns of species co-existence and the processes that create those patterns. My study system is the deciduous forests of the Eastern United States. I am interested in investigating these patterns across multiple scales and the anthropogenic effects on these patterns and processes.
Collin Hobbs
Collin Hobbs
I am interested in metapopulation dynamics and intraspecific variation of plants.
Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is a rare conifer in the state of Indiana, found only in small, scattered, isolated stands of high density that are disjunct from the main range of the species. As such, eastern hemlock and its associated community type can be considered an excellent island-mainland biogeographic system and is a candidate for further metapopulation/metacommunity studies. Currently I am collaborating with Dan Johnson as we create a high resolution map of all known eastern hemlock populations in Indiana. This is the first step towards further research of this system in which I will use techniques borrowed from molecular genetics to study metapopulation dynamics and inter-population variation.
Evie Rynkiewicz
Evie Rynkiewicz
Broadly, I am interested in how disease and behavioral ecology interact and the integration of disease's effect on communities into conservation planning. I am interested in tick-borne diseases and how their persistence and dynamics within an ecosystem is affected by diversity within the host community. Diversity here includes species richness, sex differences in infection rates and co-infection of ticks and hosts by microbes. I will be conducting field surveys of ticks and small mammal hosts in southern Indiana along with DNA analysis to investigate these questions. Visit my blog at itsabouttheecology.blogspot.com/ for some more information and fun stories about my research.
Wesley Beaulieu
Wesley Beaulieu
I am interested in interspecific interactions, especially microbial symbiosis. My current research explores plant-fungal interactions and their consequences for defensive chemistry and plant success. Using members of the Morning Glory family (Convolvulaceae), I am studying how their relationships with heritable fungal endophytes that produce bioactive alkaloids have affected evolutionary patterns across the family along with their current ecological success. I am also interested in advanced applications of statistical models in ecology and evolution.