Our research focuses on the ecology and conservation of grassland and savannas ecosystems. We are interested in understanding the unique co-evolution that has occurred between plants and large herbivores in African savannas and the consequences of these interactions for ecosystem processes across large scales. The majority of our research is conducted in the Serengeti Ecosystem of East Africa, one of the last remaining fully functional “grazing ecosystems”, home to earth’s largest free-ranging ungulate herds and one of the best studied ecosystems in the paleotropics.
Recent and current projects include: (1) multivariate investigations of how landscape features, plant forage quality and risk of predation interact to determine the spatial distribution of large herbivore resident habitats; (2) understanding how phylogenetic relatedness among plant species contributes to the assembly of communities across ecological gradients; (3) understanding factors that maintain savanna heterogeneity and plant species diversity across spatial scales; (4) investigations of the effects of plants and herbivores on nutrient cycling; (5) understanding the factors that determine the dynamics and stability of tree-grass coexistence in savannas across continents.
