Experimental ecology

Constructed ecosystems or “ecosystems in a bottle” — called microcosms — are used to test theories in population dynamics. Study organisms include Daphnia (a genus of zooplankton), Aphanizomenon (a blue green alga), Saccharomyces (yeast), and Vibrio fischeri (a bacterium that forms a symbiosis with bobtail squid).

Some outcomes of this work include the first experimental demonstrations of density dependent demographic stochasticity and critical slowing down.