My main research interests center on the origin and maintenance of high biodiversity systems that occupy narrow ecological confines. Examples of this include plant species within the sagebrush steppe of western North America, the legume family within tropical forests, and viruses within Yellowstone National Park hot springs. If speciation is analogous to a mutational process and species turnover in a biological community is akin to genetic drift, then biodiversity is predicted to be patterned according to island biogeographic principles. As such, communities that are dispersal limited (isolated) for whatever reason will have a diversity profile that is different from communities that are not dispersal limited. The viral communities of Yellowstone National Park hot springs (collaborative work with Mark Young’s lab) illustrate a biodiversity extreme, which has both a very high biodiversity generating capacity combined with no dispersal limitation. Plant diversity in the seasonally dry tropical forests and the sagebrush steppe illustrate the opposite end of the spectrum, but still retaining a moderate to high diversity generating capacity. The seasonally dry forests are dispersal limited because they occur as fragments or patches, in contrast to tropical wet forests. The sagebrush steppe plant community has the lowest biodiversity generating capacity probably because of its high latitude (i.e., shorter growing season). Such biodiversity research allows molecular phylogenetics and systematics to be combined to test predictions of the theory that biogeographical parameters, as opposed to environmental parameters, have a strong influence on biodiversity.

Lavin research site

Current Laboratory Personnel:

Toby Pennington, Ph.D. Visiting Scholar (Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh)
Tim Seipel, M.S. Student

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