Dr. John D. Parker is the Principal Investigator of the Terrestrial Ecology Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

I am a community ecologist and most of my research focuses on how various global change scenarios, including biodiversity loss, species invasions, and climate change, alter populations, communities, and ecosystems. Originally trained as a marine ecologist in the laboratories of Drs. JJ Orth and Emmett Duffy at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, I completed a marine and freshwater ecology doctorate with Dr. Mark Hay at Georgia Tech.  After that I did my post-doctoral training with Dr. Anurag Agrawal at Cornell University before arriving at SERC in 2007.  Most of my current research is in forested ecosystems, including temperate forests along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and mangrove forests in the tropics. 

Curriculum vitae

Jess is a 2010 graduate of Penn State. She has a B.S. in Forest Management and has previously worked for the National Park Service at Assateague Island.  While there she worked to map and manage a Phragmites australis infestation, identify rare plants, and implement new projects aimed to monitor the impacts of different management regimes on plant communities.

At  SERC:   I help oversee the day to day activities of the lab, from field work to data entry.  This past spring I helped to plant ~3,500 seedlings in the forest at SERC for a new diversity experiment. During the summer I worked alongside three interns to measure, identify, and tag several thousand seedlings for two other continuing projects. Also, we are working to create a herbarium for the lab, with those specimens that are collected being sent for DNA identification.  So far I have helped collect over 200 plants for that project.  

Research interests:   I am interested in working with plant communities from the marsh to the forest. I enjoy the process of plant identification and collection – strange, I know – and hope to pursue a Master’s degree in the future.

I graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2010 with a degree in international studies and economics and a minor in biology. I have worked in a variety of fields from international relations to advanced biofuel management and assessment, but my passion lies in ecology. I thoroughly enjoy ecological research, which allows me to spend time outdoors and challenges me to think critically about the changes and dynamics we see in our surrounding environment. I am also strangely obsessed with plants and I often get caught up in searching for and identifying different species, which makes me feel like a plant detective! Within ecology I have been involved in studies researching the effects of climate change in the chaparral and coastal sage scrub communities of California through altered precipitation regimes. Currently I am studying the effects of diversity in tree sapling communities to see if diversity is important and how it can affect growth, survival, insect herbivory, and deer browsing. I am also working on a project comparing ecosystem function in natural, restored, and prior converted freshwater wetlands. After my time here, I hope to continue my studies in graduate school to receive my Master’s degree in plant ecology.

I graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a BA in Biology in May 2011. In the past, I’ve worked on projects involving deer spotlighting, male fiddler crab interactions, and iguana training. I am currently working on a project involving leaf traits (toughness, hairiness, and percent water, C, N, and P) in seedlings of woody plants. I will be comparing the seedling traits to adults of the same species and to seedlings of the same species, but across different light and soil moisture gradients. We want to know whether seedlings tend to have similar traits between species, since they are experiencing the same environmental difficulties, like low light and herbivory, or if seedlings are really just miniature adults and thus differ widely among species even at the seedling stage. We also want to see how soil moisture and light intensity affect seedling leaf traits. In the future, I intend to pursue a Master’s in ecology.

Alex Forde is a graduate student at the University of Maryland College Park.  He is currently working with me, Candy Feller, and Dan Gruner to investigate the relative influences of predators (birds, bats, and lizards) versus bottom-up forcings (nutrient enrichment) on the distribution and abundance of arboreal arthropods in mangrove forests

Advisor: Dr. Dan Gruner

Previous Education:
B.A. Biology, Carleton College

Research Interests:
I am interested in the consequences of genotypic and phenotypic diversity for ecological communities. More specifically, I would like to better understand how biodiversity affects food web processes, focusing on intraspecific diversity in secondary consumers, such as arthropod predators and parasitoids. I am also interested in multi-trophic interactions that involve conflict or synergism between plants and predators, with regards to their effects on the abundance and distribution of herbivore populations.

Location of Research:
Carrie Bow Cay, Belize

Publications:
Forde AJ, Applewhite HS, and Bass HW. 2009 A Laboratory and Field Survey of Leaf Feeding Resistance in Diverse Maize Inbred Lines. Maize Genetics Newsletter 83 http://www.agron.missouri.edu/mnl/83/pdf%20files/48Forde.pdf

Funding Sources:
2009 Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, Smithsonian Institution
2009 Flagship Fellowship, University of Maryland
2010 Darwin Fellowship, University of Maryland
2010 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
2010 Latin American Studies Center Graduate Student Summer Grant

Awards:
2008 Ecological Society of America Student Section Best Undergraduate Poster Presentation
2010 First place, student oral paper competition, Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America Eastern Branch

Undergrad: BS in Biology/Environmental Studies, University of Richmond, 2006

Masters: MS in Marine Science, University of South Alabama, 2010

Publications: Lemoine N.P. and J. F. Valentine. (in revision) Structurally complex habitats provided by Acropora palmata alter ecosystem processes on a patch reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Santuary. Coral Reefs

Research Interests: My interest is in scaling up from individual-level processes to ecosystem dynamics.  In particular, I am interested in how individual metabolic rates affect community structure and trophic dynamics. I address these issues from a climate change perspective to determine how rising temperatures will affect community structure by altering metabolic rates of primary producers and consumers.

website: http://www2.fiu.edu/~nlemo001/Nate/About_Me.html