Research
Diversity, stability & species interactions
Much of my current research uses community-wide studies to test how connections between humans and ecosystems reconstruct interactions between species and alter overall ecosystem stability. We have currently a limited ability to predict the community level consequences of perturbations, primarily because direct and indirect interactions between species are so complex and dynamic that they are difficult to quantify. So I am working to quantify the strength and distribution of these interactions in marine communities using manipulative experiments in New Zealand and North America.
Wood, SA, SA Lilley, DR Schiel, JB Shurin. 2010. Organismal traits are more important than environment for species interactions in the intertidal zone. Ecology Letters 13:1160–1171. [doi] [pdf]
Research Philosophy
I do ecological research that spans expanses in scale, from small local communities to large biogeographic regions, and from the present day into the prehistoric. My goal is to understand the processes that generate patterns of species distribution and abundance in ecosystems, with the hope that by unraveling underlying mechanisms we will improve our capacity to predict how ecosystems will respond to future change.
Relative influences of local and regional processes
A primary question in ecology considers the relative importance of local and regional determinants of community structure. Local scale interactions between species such as competition and predation are undoubtedly key at some local scales; likewise, more regional historico-evolutionary processes such as speciation also have a hand in the sculpting of communities. However we still have a poor understanding of the relative influence of these factors at different scales and under different circumstances. Using a large intertidal community dataset we have recently parsed apart the relative importance of local and regional drivers of local species richness across a variety of local scales and habitats.
Russell, R, SA Wood, G Allison, BA Menge. 2006. Scale, environment, and trophic status: The context dependency of community saturation in rocky intertidal communities. American Naturalist 167: E158-E170. [doi] [pdf]
Biocomplexity of Sanak Island, Alaska
I am also involved in a project working to decipher the interactions of humans with their environment over deep time (1000's of years). This is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research effort amongst physical, social, and biological scientists designed to establish the linkages between native Aleut people and the ecosystem throughout the Lower Alaskan Peninsula and Sanak Islands.
Maschner, HDG, MW Betts, J Cornell, JA Dunne, B Finney, N Huntly, JW Jordan, AA King, N Misarti, KL Reedy-Maschner, R Russell, A Tews, SA Wood, and B Benson. 2009. An Introduction to the Biocomplexity of Sanak Island, Western Gulf of Alaska. Pacific Science 63: 673-709. [doi] [pdf]
