Research Group Leaders
Please note: this represents only a partial list of the researchers who use the Gump Station.
University of California Berkeley
Roy Caldwell Integrative Biology
Research Interests: Invertebrate behavior and ecology centering on the behavioral ecology of stomatopod crustaceans, a group of tropical marine predators.
Rosemary Gillespie Director, Essig Museum of Entomology
Research Interests: Understanding evolutionary patterns and processes among populations and species, especially spiders.
Carole Hickman Integrative Biology
Research Interests: Theoretical, constructional, evolutionary, and developmental morphology provide the conceptual and practical tools for the analysis of form and function in living and fossil organisms, particularly Mollusca.
Patrick Kirch The Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology, Director, Oceanic Archaeology Laboratory, and Curator of Oceania, Hearst Museum of Anthropology
Research Interests: The origins and chronology of Pacific settlement, the Lapita cultural complex, evolution of the Polynesian chiefdoms, human impacts to island ecosystems, and the development of a phylogenetic approach in historical anthropology.
Moorea related grants: 1998 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Household Archaeology and Prehistoric Social Transformation in Central Eastern Polynesia. 2000 France-Berkeley Fund East Polynesian Archaeology conference.
Jere Lipps Integrative Biology
Research Interests: Evolutionary biology of marine animals and protists in particular. This interest involves the study of the ecology and biology of fossil and living species.
David Lindberg Director, Museum of Paleontology
Research Interests: Evolution in the rocky, nearshore marine biome. The evolution of select organisms (mostly Mollusca), the changing habitat, and the resultant interactions between organisms and between organisms and the habitat through time.
Brent Mishler Director, University and Jepson Herbaria
Research Interests: Empirical studies of ecology, phylogeny, systematics, and development of mosses, and the theoretical basis of systematic and evolutionary biology.
Moorea related grants: Partnership for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy.
Vincent Resh Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Research Interests: Ecological studies of aquatic invertebrates involve descriptive and experimental approaches to life history studies, herbivore-plant interactions, effects of disturbance, and other topics related to population dynamics, biotic and abiotic interactions, and community structure and function. These studies currently are being conducted in California coastal streams and on the diadromous fauna in oceanic island streams near the UC Berkeley research station in Moorea, French Polynesia.
George Roderick Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Research Interests: The biology and genetics of bioinvasions, and the history and structure of populations, especially in the context of conservation biology. Work addresses both basic and applied questions, taking advantage of the opportunities associated with the geography of Pacific Basin, Pacific Islands, and Pacific Rim.
University of California Santa Barbara
Sally Holbrook Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology
Research Interests: Population dynamics and species interactions of marine species, mainly reef fishes.
Hunter Lenihan Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management
Research Interests: Detecting the ecological impacts of human activities and natural disturbances on marine ecosystems, and developing proactive means of recovering and restoring marine resources, such as habitats and populations of economically/ecologically valuable species.
Russell Schmitt Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology
Research Interests: To understand general processes and mechanisms that influence (1) abundance and dynamics of populations and (2) species composition and diversity of communities.
Barbara Walker Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research
Research Interests: Marine environmental politics in French Polynesia, California's Central Coast, and Ghana, West Africa. In French Polynesia, Walker has studied the relationships between gender and work in the process of economic restructuring in Mo'orea and Tahaa. Walker has recently begun a collaborative project to study the social and ecological effects of the a system of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Mo'orea's lagoon. Collaborators in this research include researchers at CRIOBE, Mo'orea; Eric Edlund of The University of Montana, and Rick Wilder of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Walker's research in French Polynesia has been supported by a National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship (SBR-9806256), and a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (00-65195-GSS).
University of California Riverside
Michael Hamilton James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve
Research Interests: Embedded wireless networked sensing of temperate and tropical ecosystems, including robotic and mobile sensor platforms. Co-Principal Investigator of CENS, a NSF Science & Technology Center, developing Embedded Networked Sensing Systems and applying this revolutionary technology to critical scientific and social applications. Like the Internet, these large-scale, distributed, systems, composed of smart sensors and actuators embedded in the physical world, will eventually infuse the entire world, but at a physical level instead of virtual. Read more about CENS...
Mark Hoddle Entomology
Research Interests: The emphasis of my work is to identify pest problems where biological control could be successful, locate and release natural enemies, and then evaluate natural enemy impact on pest population growth. Evaluations of biological control agents are conducted primarily in the field, and when necessary, aspects of both pest and natural enemy biology and behavior are studied in the laboratory. I am particularly interested in determining; 1) the magnitude of reduction in pest population growth caused by natural enemies, 2) the mechanisms by which pests and natural enemies co-exist at low densities, 3) the number of natural enemy species that are needed to give control, 4) inter-specific competition between natural enemies which utilize the same host, and 5) the economics of biological control when compared to pesticides.
California State University Northridge
Peter Edmunds Department of Biology
Research Interests: The physiological ecology of marine invertebrates with particular emphasis on the unique attributes of clonal life histories. My students and I work at the organismic, population and community levels and take a strong hypothesis driven approach to questions that can only be answered by combining laboratory and field experimentation. By combining in situ techniques with simple field facilities and a laboratory at Northridge, we are able to exploit multidisciplinary approaches to identify some of the critical processes shaping marine communities. To date this effort has concentrated on cnidarians found in tropical (Caribbean and Pacific) and temperate (Santa Catalina Island) regions.
University of Florida
Craig Osenberg Department of Zoology
Research Interests: (1) Size and stage-structured interactions, and their implications for population dynamics and community patterns. (2) The roles of density-dependence, predation, competition, and resource limitation in aquatic ecosystems. (3) The application of meta-analysis in ecology (e.g., quantification of effect size (and interaction strength) and its variation among organisms and environments). (4) The design and implementation of whole ecosystem experiments and environmental assessment studies. (5) The application of ecological theory to the design of marine reserves and fisheries management strategies.
University College London (UK) and UC Berkeley
Sylvain Charlat Department of Biology/Gump Station
Research Interests: Different replicating entities (different genes, different organisms, whatsoever...) often live together, and share common reproductive pathways. This is symbiosis. Relationships between the different actors are complex and dynamic: a never-ending game of conflict and cooperation. I am focusing on one special case of symbiosis, where a bacterium (Wolbachia: the symbiont) inhabits the cells of larger organisms (Arthropods and Nematodes: the hosts). Wolbachia is well known for its dramatic effects on host reproduction: it can turn males to females, kill males, or cause complex patterns of sterility. In many cases, Wolbachia misdeeds appear to be good for females and bad for males, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, because only females transmit the bacterium across generations (through the egg cytoplasm). Males are dead ends.
The diversity of Wolbachia effects is amazing: it illustrates many of the possible evolutionary trajectories of symbiosis. I am personally working on the evolutionary consequences of sex-ratio distorters. The South Pacific butterfly Hypolimnas bolina is infected by a male-killing Wolbachia: infected females’ sons die before hatching. In this system, the prevalence of the male-killer varies from 0 to 99.9% between islands, resulting in drastic variation of sex-ratio in natural populations. Using a comparative approach (comparing different populations harboring different sex-ratio) I am trying to identify the ecological and evolutionary consequences of male-rareness on the butterfly reproductive biology.
Victoria University, Wellington (New Zealand)
Jeff Shima School of Biological Sciences
Research Interests: My primary research interests are in population and community ecology of organisms with stage-structured populations. Although most of my own research is directed at understanding the processes that control distribution, abundance, and dynamics of marine organisms (mainly marine fishes and invertebrates), my interests are in quantitative ecology and extend beyond those in which I am currently involved. I address fundamental research questions that (1) are well grounded in ecological theory and (2) have important implications for management (e.g., for the design of marine reserves, fisheries management practices, mitigation of environmental impacts, and control of invasive species). I favour approaches that integrate field experiments, monitoring data, and modelling whenever possible.