Current Lab Members
Prof. David Ward
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Samia Hamati
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Leland Bennion
PhD Student
My research interests center on the impacts of invasive species on plant communities. I use the tools of population and community ecology to study how invaders establish, become dominant in a system, and spread to new areas. My work varies. Sometimes I seek to understand the mechanisms that promote the success of invasive populations at local to regional scales. Other times I am interested in the outcomes of restoration, both on the invader and the native plant community. I believe in conducting research that has useful applications, as such most of my work is conducted through lens of conservation and restoration ecology.
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Matt Wuensch
PhD Student
My research interests broadly lie in ungulate ecology and the foraging ecology of other mammals. The current focus of my work in the Ward lab is to discern in which habitats white-tailed deer prefer to forage while they are located in fragmented forest ecosystems. Using giving-up densities (GUDs), I will analyze whether white-tailed deer prefer to forage in forests, grasslands or the ecotone where the two habitats meet. I also will assess which plant species white-tailed deer prefer to forage upon and which plants they avoid. I plan to achieve this by using captive deer in a multiple-choice (cafeteria-style) preference study. I will then measure the nutritional quality of the plants used in the preference study by determining their crude protein content and concentration of secondary metabolites (which deter herbivores). I will finally use all of the information gathered to then inform a modified version of the Hobbs & Swift (1985) model which I will use to estimate the nutritional carrying capacity for deer in local habitats.
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Meggie Moore
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Chris Poling
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Sam Sharp
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Mikayla Milford
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John Gerrath
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Alex Pratt
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Lab Alumni
Cindy Perkovich - PhD 2021 - currently faculty at Ashland University
Research thesis: "Responses of oaks to mammal and insect herbivory"
Research thesis: "Responses of oaks to mammal and insect herbivory"
Sara Tomiolo - Post doc