Dr. Mathew Leibold - CHAN-elling Metacommunities: Usefully Linking Pattern to Processes?

Bio

I was an undergraduate and also obtained an MS at the University of Arizona, working with Dr. Jim Brown. I then did my PhD at Michigan State University, working with Drs. Earl Werner and Don Hall. I did a first postdoc at Duke, working with Dr. Henry Wilbur, and started a second one at Michigan State University working with Dr. Alan Tessier. I started as an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, where I was also the Chair of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology before moving to the University of Texas at Austin. I moved to the University of Florida in 2018. My work has examined trophic structure in food webs, the formalization of the "Contemporary Niche Theory" (along with Dr. Jon Chase), the emergent concept of the "Metacommunity Ecology," and Eco-Evolutionary feedback in metacommunities. In my work, I combine theoretical, statistical/observational, and experimental approaches. I have been very active in leading and participating in collaborative working groups, such as those funded by NCEAS and iDiv. Currently, I am focusing on formalizing the links between pattern and process in naturally biodiverse metacommunities where causal relations can be arbitrarily "entangled."