Lab Members

Principal Investigator

	Scott L. Collins 505.277.6303 Scott is currently Professor of Biology & Director of the Sevilleta LTER. His research interests include plant community dynamics; gradient models and structure; the role of disturbance in communities; fire ecology; patch dynamics; landscape ecology; grassland ecology; analysis of species distribution and abundance; pulse dynamics in aridland ecosystems.

Postdoctoral Associates

	Michell L. Thomey 505.277.1727 Michell is a Post-Doctoral Fellow working with Drs. William T. Pockman and Scott L. Collins. Her research is focused in plant ecology and plant physiological ecology. She uses leaf-gas exchange (photosynthesis), aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and soil respiration techniques to understand the similarities and differences between plant communities and species response to global climate change. Michell conducts research at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge as part of the Sevilleta LTER program.

Graduate Students

	Sally Koerner Sally is a PhD Candidate. For her dissertation she is investigating how climate change, loss of grazing, and altered disturbance regimes interact to affect plant community composition, structure, and dynamics in savanna grasslands. She uses two study sites: Kruger National Park, South Africa and Konza Prairie LTER, Kansas.
	Laura Ladwig Laura is interested in the influence of human mediated disturbances on plant community dynamics and ecosystem processes. The main community drivers she investigates include nitrogen deposition, fire, and altered precipitation regimes and her dissertation research is focused in semiarid grass and shrublands of the Sevilleta NWR in central New Mexico. Laura is also interested in how plant-microbe interactions change with regards to altered disturbance regimes.
	Kina Murphy 505.603.7188 Kina Murphy is interested in plant and large herbivore community interactions, wildlife movement and assemblage patterns, how large herbivores impact net primary productivity and carbon cycles, body size, scaling and energy exchange between trophic levels. Her research focuses on how the movement patterns and metabolic rates of large herbivores impact net primary productivity and carbon sequestration along the Chobe-Linyanti-Zambezi Wetland in Botswana, and comparatively on the Pritzlaff Ranch and Villas Caldera in New Mexico.
	Matt Petrie 505.453.4706 Matt likes projects that aim to synthesize the better parts of ecology, hydrology, and earth systems science to assess and understand the interaction of abiotic and biotic processes in arid ecosystems. He believes there is much opportunity to strengthen scientific analysis through a multidisciplinary approach.

Former Lab Members


	Selene Baez Selene is a former graduate student of Dr. Collins. She received her Ph.D. from UNM in 2006 and is currently a postdoctoral researcher with Emilio M. Bruna, an Associate Professor at the University of Florida.
	Laura B. Calabrese Laura is interested in looking at the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances (fire, grazing, atmospheric deposition) on plant community structure and dynamics in grasslands. Most of her research is going on at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge as part of the Sevilleta LTER program, though she was also involved in a post-wildfire monitoring program in the Manzano Mountains.
	Alejandra Carvajal Alejandra is interested in seed dispersal and predation and how these two factors influence the composition and structure of the plant community. She is interested in three groups of granivores: ants, birds, and rodents, and their relative importance to seed dispersal and predation in the arid grassland of the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge.
	Joe Fargione Joe received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2004 and then came to UNM as a postdoc to work with Dr. Collins. He is currently working as the Regional Science Director for the central U.S. region of The Nature Conservancy.
	Etsuko Nonaka Etsuko’s research interest is mainly in theoretical ecology and ecological modeling, and her projects cover various topics that are both theoretical and applied. She is a Ph.D student in Ecology and a master’s student in applied mathematics at UNM. Also, she starts her study abroad program at Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden, from 2009. Currently, she is working on a population dynamics model of ticks and tick-borne viruses and spatial modeling of grass patch size distributions in semi-arid landscapes.