Theory

NovakLab
NovakLab

Publications

Collective behaviour can stabilize ecosystems
Collective behaviour is common in bacteria, plants, and animals, and thus across ecosystems, from biofilms to cities. With collective …
Collective behaviour can stabilize ecosystems
Hidden layers of density dependence in consumer feeding rates
Functional responses relate a consumer’s feeding rates to variation in its abiotic and biotic environment, providing insight into …
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Hidden layers of density dependence in consumer feeding rates
Exact probabilities for the indeterminacy of complex networks as perceived through press perturbations
We consider the goal of predicting how complex networks respond to chronic (press) perturbations when characterizations of their …
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Exact probabilities for the indeterminacy of complex networks as perceived through press perturbations
Rapid and direct recoveries of predators and prey through synchronized ecosystem management
One of the twenty-first century’s greatest environmental challenges is to recover and restore species, habitats and ecosystems. The …
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Characterizing species interactions to understand press perturbations: What is the community matrix?
The community matrix is among ecology’s most important mathematical abstractions, formally encapsulating the interconnected …
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Characterizing species interactions to understand press perturbations: What is the community matrix?
Complexity increases predictability in allometrically constrained food webs
All ecosystems are subjected to chronic disturbances, such as harvest, pollution, and climate change. The capacity to forecast how …
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Complexity increases predictability in allometrically constrained food webs
Ecosystem context and historical contingency in apex predator recoveries
Habitat loss, overexploitation, and numerous other stressors have caused global declines in apex predators. This “trophic downgrading” …
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Effects of predator introductions on population and community dynamics

There is increasing awareness that human activities are altering the ways that natural systems operate and that local shifts in species …
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Selection on stability across ecological scales
Much of the focus in evolutionary biology has been on the adaptive differentiation among organisms. It is equally important to …
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Selection on stability across ecological scales
Where does the time go?: Mixing and the depth-dependent distribution of fossil ages
Knowing how time is distributed within a fossil record is fundamental to paleobiology. Many efforts to quantify temporal resolution …
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Where does the time go?: Mixing and the depth-dependent distribution of fossil ages
Probabilistic patterns of interaction: the effects of link-strength variability on food web structure
Patterns of species interactions affect the dynamics of food webs. An important component of species interactions that is rarely …
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Probabilistic patterns of interaction: the effects of link-strength variability on food web structure
Generalized modeling of ecological population dynamics
Over the past 7 years, several authors have used the approach of generalized modeling to study the dynamics of food chains and food …
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Generalized modeling of ecological population dynamics
Predicting community responses to perturbations in the face of imperfect knowledge and network complexity
How best to predict the effects of perturbations to ecological communities has been a long‐standing goal for both applied and basic …
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Predicting community responses to perturbations in the face of imperfect knowledge and network complexity
The Effect of Travel Loss on Evolutionarily Stable Distributions of Populations in Space
A key assumption of the ideal free distribution (IFD) is that there are no costs in moving between habitat patches. However, because …
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Using experimental indices to quantify the strength of species interactions

Few methods for demonstrating the effects of species interactions rival that of the manipulative experiment (Kareiva and Levin 2002). …
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Using experimental indices to quantify the strength of species interactions
Estimating nonlinear interaction strengths: an observation-based method for species-rich food webs
Efforts to estimate the strength of species interactions in species‐rich, reticulate food webs have been hampered by the multitude of …
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Estimating nonlinear interaction strengths: an observation-based method for species-rich food webs
Trophic omnivory and the structure, strength, and nonlinear nature of species interactions across a productivity gradient

Two elements of food webs add significantly to their complexity: The presence of trophic omnivores and the nonlinear nature of …
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