We study the dynamics of food webs and ecosystems.

Through analysis of interactions among predators, herbivores, plants and decomposers, we resolve the functional role of species within aboveground and belowground food webs and how those roles determine attendant ecosystem functioning. We combine empirical research with mathematical modeling and deal with a variety of ecosystems and study species, ranging from puma and vicuña in Argentinian grasslands, lions in Tanzanian savanna, to insects and their spider predators in aboveground and belowground food webs in Connecticut grasslands.

Lab News

• Feeling down about the environment? Find hope in Os Schmitz’s book written to communicate to a broader public  how ecological scientific knowhow can be put to good use.
• Check out the News Feature in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on Os Schmitz’s and colleague Chris Wilmer’s work.
• Congratulations to former doctoral student Karin Burghardt who has accepted a faculty position in the Department of Entomology at the University of Maryland.
• Congratulations to former doctoral student Jennie Miller who has begun a position in Washington, DC as Senior Scientist at Defenders of Wildlife

Contact Us

Schmitz Lab
Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
370 Prospect Street
Greeley Laboratory, Room 119
New Haven, CT 06511 USA
Phone: (203) 436-5276
oswald.schmitz [at] yale.edu

Recent Publications

Smith-Ramesh, L.M., Rosenblatt A.E. and Schmitz, O.J. 2018. Multivariate climate change can favor large herbivore body size in food webs. American Naturalist 191:333-342.

Barton, B.T. and O.J. Schmitz. 2018. Opposite effects of daytime and nighttime warming on top-down control of plant diversity. Ecology 99:13-20.

Buchkowski, R.W., M.A. Bradford, A.S. Grandy, O.J. Schmitz, and W.R. Wieder. 2017. Applying population and community ecology theory to advance understanding of belowground biogeochemistry. Ecology Letters 20: 231-245.

Schmitz, O.J., R.W. Buchkowski, J.R. Smith, M. Telthorst, A.E. Rosenblatt. 2017. Predator community composition is linked to soil carbon retention across a human land use gradient. Ecology 98:1256-1265.

Schmitz, O.J., J.R.B. Miller, A.M. Trainor, and B. Abrahms. 2017. Toward a community ecology of landscapes: predicting multiple predator-prey interactions across geographic space. Ecology 98:2281-2292.
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See all publications.

2016-2017 Schmitz Lab Members (from left to right): Os, Julia M, Rob B, Mary B, Alex M, Adam E, Sam M, and Kat W.