I have broad interests in population and community ecology, including 45 years of research in Africa. For the last 30 years, I have been involved with more applied research at the community and landscape scales in the western U.S. and Kenya. My current research is related to the ecology, management, restoration, and conservation of human-dominated landscapes.
My current research focuses on the following two projects:
I also have collaborated with Lynne Isbellin her studies of primate behavioral ecology providing a life history and plant ecological perspective to her explorations of how food and predation influence the evolution of behavior. (Behavioral Ecology publications).
Satellite view of the KLEE exclosure plots in Laikipia, Kenya, where we have been excluding various combinations of cattle, wildlife, and mega-herbivores (elephants and giraffes) from a savanna grassland since 1995. Each of the 18 plots is 200m x 200m. This is an image taken 2015 (Google Earth). Darker areas are indicative of greater densities or forbs and woody species. The larger pale areas are anthropogenic glades, and the smaller (30m x 30m) white squares visible in some plots are the 2013 controlled burns. This is the most productive field experiment ever carried out on the African continent.
