Dr Callum Lawson

Scientific Guest

Research interests

My research seeks to understand how environmental fluctuations affect ecological and evolutionary processes. In particular, I’ve studied the impacts of short-term fluctuations in climate on: (i) the metapopulation dynamics of range expansions, using the silver-spotted skipper butterfly Hesperia comma (as a PhD student with Robert Wilson), (ii) population dynamics, especially long-term population growth rates (as a post-doc with Martijn van de Pol), and (iii) the evolution of bet-hedging adaptations, with a focus on seed dormancy in desert annuals (an ongoing collaboration with Jennifer Gremer and Larry Venable). In my current project with Uli Brose at iDiv, I’m investigating the impacts of environmental fluctuations on ecological community dynamics. We’re using mathematical models to explore how the variability and coexistence of populations within a food web are impacted by environmental fluctuations of different “speeds”, such as daily versus annual cycles in temperature.