Our lab is focuses on the role of organisms in maintaining vital ecosystem processes and how flow regime alterations and land use and climate change may interact to influence these processes.
We are particularly interested in how species traits, especially stoichiometric traits, influence structure and function within aquatic systems.
Research in my laboratory addresses both basic and applied ecology and currently follows two main themes:
- Physiological Stress Due to Changed Thermal and Nutrient Regimes
- Aquatic-Terrestrial Linkages via Amphibians
My lab is interested in patterns and processes in aquatic ecosystems.
We are particularly interested in how species traits, especially stoichiometric traits and thermal preferences, influence structure and function within aquatic systems.
I study the ecology, evolution, and conservation of aquatic ecosystems with particular focus in rivers and geographically isolated wetlands.
My lab's research spans the influence of hydrologic patterns and landscape patterns on community assembly, resource availability, feeding roles of invertebrates, nutrient cycling, invasive species interactions, and the impacts of land use on water chemistry. Research in the lab particularly focuses on the role of organisms in maintaining vital ecosystem processes and how environmental change may interact to influence these processes.
Topics of greatest in the Atkinson lab include:
- Linking resource use and stoichiometry of aquatic organisms to ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycles.
- Role of organisms as biogeomorphic agents in aquatic ecosystems
- Species assemblage structure, biodiversity, and species functional traits and effect traits
- Energy dynamics in food webs and trophic ecology
- Terrestrial-aquatic linkages in geographically isolated wetlands.
Current Lab Projects and Collaborations:
- Mussel Dimensions of Biodiversity
- Freeze or Famine in Arctic Spring-Streams
- Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS)
- Thermal and Nutrient Stress in Unionid Mussels
- Terrestrial-Aquatic Linkages via Amphibians
- Water scarcity across Social-Ecological Systems
