Bio

I am a plant ecologist in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Vermont. My interests are in theoretical ecology and population and community ecology. Recently, I have been studying why introduced plants become invasive when introduced into a new range from both a theoretical and experimental perspective. My theoretical work relies heavily on stochastic cellular automatas and how spatially local rules can control dynamics.

Project: Competition and Persistence in a Two Dimensional Multi-Rule Cellular Automata

The goal of this project was to determine whether randomly selected rules can coexist within a single two dimensional grid. Ecologists have generated many hypotheses to explain why species coexist. My goal was to determine whether a randomly selected group of rules could easily coexist. In other words, was coexistence of multiple rules easily achieved or difficult? If coexistence of rules are rare, then I would like to know what the properties of the rules are that allow coexistence.

Favorite Outer Totalistic Three-Color Rule

Rule chosen: 10011111