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| Name |
Holt, Robert D. |
| Location
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University of Florida |
| Primary Field
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Environmental Sciences and Ecology |
| Secondary Field
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Evolutionary Biology |
 Election Citation
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Holt examines theoretical and conceptual issues at the population and community levels of ecological organization, linking ecology with evolutionary biology. |
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Research Interests
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Robert Holt's lab utilizes a variety of theoretical approaches, ranging from the use of relatively simple models to explore common but complex ecological phenomena, to detail-rich, spatially explicit individual-based models. The lab also takes empirical approaches to ecological questions, including the implementation and analysis of landscape experiments. Specific topics at present in the lab span a diverse array of themes in ecology and evolutionary biology. Ecological topics include: integrating community ecology perspectives into traditional arenas of evolutionary ecology (e.g., the evolution of aposematism and mimicry); indirect interactions in multispecies communities; exploring how resources and predation drive infectious disease dynamics and impacts in ecological communities; and, litter as a mechanism of interference competition and ecosystem engineering in plant communities. Evolutionary topics include analyses of genetic, phenotypic and ecological influences on evolutionary rescue (when natural selection permits a species to adapt to a novel environment, where otherwise it would go extinct) and niche conservatism (e.g., constraints on evolution at the edge of geographical ranges, and in sink habitats). Though his research is largely theoretical and conceptual, he has also engaged in field work, for instance setting up a large-scale experiment in Kansas on how habitat fragmentation modulates secondary succession (among the longest-running field experiments in ecology). |
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