In the Hurlbert Lab we ask questions about the structure of ecological communities, and the processes that are responsible for determining the patterns of diversity, composition, turnover and relative abundance both within local assemblages and across the globe. Our work spans vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant communities, and we use a variety of approaches from manipulative experiments to modeling to working with global scale datasets.
Lab News
May 2012
* Allen talks about bird migration on WAMC's The Academic Minute.
April 2012
* Spencer received Highest Honors for his thesis on the spread of the Eurasian Collared-Dove, as well as the department's Coker Award for demonstrating the highest ideals of scholarship and research.
* Katie received a Martina Wadewitz Haggard Memorial Scholarship for her field work out of Highlands Biological Station.
March 2012
* Allen and Jes and two other UNC grad students return from another stimulating Dimensions of Biodiversity meeting, this time in beautiful Friday Harbor.
* Allen and Lily's research featured in Endeavors magazine!
February 2012
* Allen and former undergrad Lily Liang have a paper on shifts in avian migration phenology out at PLoS ONE! The work was featured briefly on local NPR affiliate WUNC, and in more depth on the Canadian public radio show The Current. See also this piece in the Daily Tar Heel and this on the eBird website!
January 2012
* Allen and fellow UNC prof Lauren Buckley have a new paper online at GEB comparing macroecological patterns of endotherms and ectotherms!
* Former post-doc James Stegen has a NCEAS working group paper on beta-diversity in North American birds accepted at GEB!
December 2011
* Allen, James, and Craig McClain of NESCent fame have a paper on beta-diversity of deep sea bivalves accepted at Proc Roy Soc B! That's a new biome represented in work from the Hurlbert Lab! See Craig's blog post about it here.
November 2011
* Allen and Jes return from a productive Dimensions of Biodiversity graduate seminar meeting in Washington state
October 2011
* Even carving pumpkins, Allen is a nerd
* Congrats to Brian for passing his orals!
August 2011
* Dan and Jes represent at ESA
July 2011
* Dan and Allen have a paper on species turnover accepted at Ecology
June 2011
* James and Allen have a new paper on beta diversity at PLoS ONE.
"Ecological patterns, about which we construct theories, are only interesting if they are repeated. They may be repeated in space or in time, and they may be repeated from species to species. A pattern which has all of these kinds of repetition is of special interest because of its generality, and yet these very general events are only seen by ecologists with rather blurred vision. The very sharp-sighted always find discrepancies and are able to say that there is no generality, only a spectrum of special cases. This diversity of outlook has proved useful in every science, but it is nowhere more marked than in ecology." --Robert MacArthur, 1968
