Ecology Section
Ben Letcher (CV)
Contact Info:
Conte Anadromous Fish Research Center, USGS/BRD
PO Box 796
Turners Falls, MA 01376email: Ben_Letcher@USGS.gov or bletcher@nrc.umass.edu
office phone: (413) 863-3803
cell phone: (413) 522-9417Title: Section Leader
Education:
1985 - B.S. Trinity college, Biology
1990 - M.S. University of Rhode Island, Oceanography
1994 - Ph.D. North Carolina State University, Zoology
Postdoctoral:
SUNY Stony Brook, 1994Research Interests:
I am interested in how individual variation gets ramped up to population dynamics and to evolutionary processes. Does individual variation matter or does it get averaged out once it gets scaled up to population levels across years? Does the relative importance of individual variation differ across systems and species? Will habitat alterations like climate change and habitat fragmentation increase or temper the importance of individual variation?Small streams represent an excellent system to address these questions. Since 1997, we have been conducting long-term studies with individually-tagged stream salmonids to explore spatial and temporal variation in growth, survival, movement, reproductive success and selection. We use these observations of individuals in the wild to understand specific processes (growth, movement, and survival) and to combine processes into projection models to evaluate effects of environmental variability and management actions. We are also currently extending these models to accommodate variation in reproductive success and lifetime fitness. By adding estimates of heritability for key traits, we hope to build more realistic projection models that include short-term evolutionary processes. These models should provide more realistic projections of long-term (> 50 yrs) dynamics.
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.lsc.usgs.gov
Page Contact Information: modonnell@usgs.gov
Page Last Modified: Februay 20, 2009
