Visiting professor Mark Novak joins lab meeting

We were very excited to have Mark Novak join our lab meeting this week. Mark is a professor at Oregon State University studying how species interactions impact the structure of ecological communities, using mathematical models and field studies, and he is on sabbatical at UW this quarter. In lab meeting, we discussed Mark’s paper “Characterizing Species Interactions to Understand Press Perturbations: What Is the Community Matrix?” and had a fun discussion about the integration of theory and empirical data. We also discussed the variables that influence pollination events and how those can be defined as functions in a mathematical equation. It was great to have Mark join us and lead this very interesting meeting!