Distinguished Ecologist Seminars
We invite ecologists from around the world to speak each year. In the Fall, we highlight the work of a GDPE alum and a faculty member, and in the Spring we bring in outside speakers. We define “distinguished” broadly as someone who has contributed important work to the discipline of ecology. Below you will find information about our upcoming seminars.
All seminars in Spring 2025 will take place at 4:00pm in Biology Room 136. A post-seminar reception will be held at 5:00pm in the Biology 3rd Floor Atrium.
Spring 2025 Speakers
February 5th, 2025
Time, flexibility, and the importance of plant-pollinator interactions
Paul CaraDonna is a research scientist at the Denver Botanic Garden and an assistant professor at Northwestern University. His research investigates the interplay among species interactions, population dynamics, and community patterns. His lab uses the mutualistic interactions among plants and pollinators as a model system to ask fundamental ecological questions about the importance of species interactions and to understand the ecological consequences of global change (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, pollinator declines, urbanization). The CaraDonna Lab is also particularly interested in temporal ecology and the flexibility of species interactions. They address research questions using a variety of approaches including: observational field studies that leverage existing natural variation; field and laboratory experiments that build upon knowledge of this natural variation; analysis of long-term datasets and natural history collections; and quantitative tools like network analysis and simulation models.
March 26th, 2025
From leaf to biosphere: Plant functioning in a changing climate
Sean Michaletz is an assistant professor of Botany at the University of British Colombia. He is interested in the physical processes linking environmental variation to plant physiology, and how this “scales up” to influence higher-level patterns and processes. To investigate these topics, he and his lab use interdisciplinary approaches that draw upon fields such as physics, chemistry, engineering, and geoscience. Their work often involves development of mechanistic theory and models, which are parameterized, tested, and refined using data from the laboratory and the field. They also focus on long-term monitoring of climate, ecophysiology, and vegetation dynamics in our growing network of Forest MacroSystems network sites located around the world.
April 23rd, 2025
Unlocking multiple ecosystem services through diversifying farming systems
Timothy Bowles is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management. How can reliance on biodiversity and ecological processes create productive, resilient, and healthy agricultural systems? This question frames his overarching goal, which is to support transformation of our agricultural system from one reliant on intensive, synthetic inputs to one based on ecological processes. In particular, he is interested in how diversified, biologically-based farms affect soil health, resource-use-efficiency, and resilience to environmental change, especially drought. This research lies at the intersection of agroecology, soil ecology, and biogeochemistry with a focus on plant-soil-microbe interactions. He uses several approaches, including on-farm research across agricultural landscapes, historical data synthesis from long-term trials, and field and greenhouse experiments. Through collaboration with farmers, agronomists, conservation biologists, social scientists, and economists he aims for a multidimensional perspective on agroecological transformations.
For past speakers see our Previous Speakers page.