Nutritional Ecology

We are looking for ecological patterns that can be explained by finding a link between ecological and physiological factors that might explain species coexistence and also what drives fluctuations in relative abundance of insect herbivores.

Grasshopper assemblages from the Sandhills of western Nebraska and Flint Hills of Konza Prairie Biological Station in northeastern Kansas are used in individual laboratory feeding trials and field experiments. The Geometric Approach and graphical modeling are used to interpret this data.