Julia Butzler --Julia was a master’s student (M.S. 2001, University of Pittsburgh ) with Jon.  Julia’s thesis research was on the role of nutrient input variability on wetland communities and ecosystem function.  She found some cool results, most importantly, that the variability in nutrients can be at least as important as the total nutrient input.  Results from her work will definitely challenge the way we think about and model these sorts of systems.  As Jon’s first graduate student, Julia will always be remembered fondly—especially the incident with the razor blade and the tennis ball, where she was trying to devise a better zooplankton trap (use your imagination).  However, even the tennis ball fiasco didn’t slow her enthusiasm for the science.  Julia is currently a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College , working in Kathy Cottingham’s lab. 

Emily Bond -- Emily was a master’s student (M.S. 2002, University of Pittsburgh ) with Jon.  She is current an aquatic ecologist with the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.  Emily’s research examined the role that species diversity played in the functioning of ecosystems.  The novelty of Emily’s work was that rather than manipulate diversity directly, which is typical of these sorts of studies, she let the processes of community assembly and metacommunity structure create differences in diversity.  This allowed a more realistic view into the processes that underlie patterns of species diversity, which then effect ecosystem processes.  Emily’s field research involved a lot of buckets, a bunch of acid, and lots of tiny little zooplankton, but she also developed her ideas in a more general way, and published a very important conceptual paper in Ecology Letters on the role of local and regional factors in ecosystem functioning.

Andy Forbes -- Andy was an honors student (B.S. 2001, University of Pittsburgh ) who worked with Jon for his thesis research on zooplankton metacommunities.  Andy wanted to examined the effects of dispersal and heterogeneity on metacommunity composition, and designed quite an elaborate system of buckets and little connecting tubes.  All of this was done during insane hours, since he was taking field classes at the same time—he often did his fieldwork under bright lights, working past midnight .  Well, it turns out that Andy’s carpentry skills weren’t quite as good as his work ethic, and so he scrapped the first set of buckets, and turned to using fuzzy tennis balls as his dispersal agent.  His work was published in Oikos!  Andy then got an NSF predoctoral fellowship, and shipped off to the University of Wisconsin to work in the lab of Tony Ives.  You go Andy! 

Charles Goss --Chuck was a research assistant for a couple of summers (B.S. 2003, University of Michigan ), and also did a few of his own projects.  In addition to being the lab comic relief, Chuck quickly proved to be as skilled with the dip net and waders as he was with the wit.  He’s also quite skilled with the weed-wacker (not many are strong enough to weed-wack straight through the side of a cattletank!).  Then, one day, while listening to a conversation about duckweeds and Allee effects, Chuck had an absolutely brilliant idea.  He wondered whether Allee effects (positive density-dependence) could lead to source-sink effects in a metapopulation.  Populations above a certain threshold density would grow to carrying capacity, and could act as sources, whereas populations below that density would go extinct, and act as sinks—all of this under the same environmental conditions.  So, Chuck set up a bucket experiment, and used the duckweed, Lemna minor, as his population of interest.  Indeed, he found that he could maintain populations below the Allee threshold by having dispersal from a nearby habitat above the threshold.  This work could have really important implications for understanding variation in population growth and source-sink effects in otherwise similar environments.  Indeed, some really smart mathematicians have also stumbled onto similar effects.  Chuck was a double major in college, in both ecology and economics, but for now, it seems that ecology has won out.  He is now a master’s student in Joel Trexler’s lab at Florida International University, working on community ecology in the Everglades!

Erin Marnocha -- Erin was a research assistant after graduating (B.S. Washington University, 2002), and before starting up grad school.  Although she was completely new to the research world, she took on a huge variety of tasks, and made our transition to research at Wash U. oh so much easier.  Erin was quite facile dealing with long-bearded truck drivers, shoveling large quantities of dirt and rolling cattle tanks in insane heat, catching nasty little biting critters, and talking through logistical and scientific problems.  Although only with us for a few months, her mark will last!  Erin ’s now off in sunny Southern California , catching some waves, and doing some science.  She’s a Ph.d. student doing ecological research in Tom Smith’s lab at UCLA.