Staff Pages
Dr David Edwards
BSc, PhD, University of East Anglia
Research Fellow
Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology
Office: Miall 10.14
Phone: +44(0) 113 34 33107
Email:
Lab: A member of the Hamer_K group
Publications
List Dr Edwards's Publications
Research Interests
Species-environment interactions and mutualism
The primary theme of my research is species-environment interactions and inter-specific interactions. I am particularly interested in identifying physiological, behavioural, or morphological traits that determine the ability of different species to respond to environmental perturbation or that enable interspecific cooperation. To investigate these questions, I focus my work on two systems: tropical birds and ant-plant mutualisms.
My work on tropical birds focuses on what traits determine whether a species or functional group is a winner or a loser after selective logging or forest fragmentation. Using stable isotope analysis, I am investigating how tropic position and trophic niche width determines resilience to environmental change. This work also give an insight into the trophic organization of biological communities, which has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
My work ant-plant work focuses on the key question of why cooperation persists between species despite the potential for individuals to cheat or for invasion by parasites. Ant-plant interactions are classic examples of mutualism: plants provide ants with housing and food, and in return they receive protection from herbivores and competitors. I use Amazonian and Asian ant-plant systems to experimentally test for mechanisms that enforce cooperation by aligning the interests of host-plants and their ant-symbionts.
