I have broad interests in population and community ecology, including 47 years of research in Africa. For the last 35 years, I have been involved with more applied research at the community and landscape scales in the western U.S. and Kenya. My current research is related to the ecology, management, restoration, and conservation of human-dominated landscapes.
I also have collaborated with Lynne Isbellin her studies of primate behavioral ecology, providing a life history and plant ecological perspective to her explorations of how food and predation influence the evolution of behavior. (Behavioral Ecology publications).
Satellite view of the KLEE exclosure plots in Laikipia, Kenya, where we have been excluding six different combinations of cattle, wildlife, and mega-herbivores (elephants and giraffes) from a savanna grassland since 1995. Each of the 18 plots is 200m x 200m. Darker areas are indicative of greater densities or forbs and woody species. The larger pale areas are anthropogenic glades, and the smaller (30m x 30m) white squares visible in some plots are sites of small controlled burns. KLEE is the most productive field experiment ever carried out on the African continent.