We study the dynamics of food webs and ecosystems.

Through analysis of predator-prey or plant-herbivore interactions, we resolve the functional role of species within communities 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 on 4 continents, ranging from livestock and tigers in Indian jungles to monkeys in Panamanian tropical forests to insects and their spider predators in Connecticut grasslands.

Lab News

• Woohoo! Congrats to Karin for successfully defending her PhD dissertation! Hello Dr. Burghardt. Karin will be taking up a Sandra Day O’Connor Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington DC.
  
• Congratulations to Colin for being awarded a 3 year NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology using Biological Collections! Colin will take up the fellowship in Jonathan Losos’ lab at Harvard.
  
• Congrats to Lauren who just accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at NIMBioS!
• Big congrats to Kassie for receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!
• Congratulations to Alex for her acceptance into the Yale Bouchet Graduate Honor Society!
• Congratulations to Meredith for receiving the MK McCarthy-RW Scholarship for Leadership in Conservation Science!

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

Rosenblatt, A.E., Crowley, B.T., and Schmitz, O.J. 2016. Linking trophic interactions to plasticity in thermal sensitivity of geographically separated populations of a herbivore. Evolutionary Ecology doi 10.1007/s10682-016-9827-6.

Smith, J. and O.J. Schmitz. 2015. Cascading ecological effects of landscape moderated arthropod diversity. OIKOS doi 10.1111/oik.02887

Buchkowski, R.W., and O.J. Schmitz. 2015. Detritivores ameliorate the enhancing affect of plant-based trophic cascades on N cycling in an old-field system. Biology Letters 11(4)

Miller, J.R.B., Y.V. Jhala, J. Jena and O. J. Schmitz. 2015. Landscape-scale accessibility of livestock to tigers: implications of spatial grain for modeling predation risk to mitigate human-carnivore conflict. Ecology and Evolution 5(6):1354–1367.

See all publications.

2013-2104 Schmitzers at our Fall BBQ (left to right): Rachel, Colin, Alex, Jeff, Anne, Adam, Karin, Jennie, Os, Rob, Kevin and Bryan.