Complex Ecological and Evolutionary Systems

Computational and mathematical models of patterns and processes in ecology and evolution - home

Kevin Healy

Member of the Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research & Complex Ecological and Evolutionary Systems & Behavioural and Evolutionary Ecology Group

Research Interests

My main research interests center around understanding the fundamental factors and patterns which structure complex biological systems such as ecological food webs. I am particularly interested in how certain physical constraints, such as metabolic rate, environ- ment complexity and spatial scale, as well as how the behavior of individual components of a system can shape the patterns and processes governing ecological systems in both ecological and evolutionary timescales. My main approaches are through analytical and simulation based modeling and potentially some experimental approaches. Other areas of interest to me include: parasitology (in particular parasite ecology), Macro-evolutionary processes, animal behavior and phylogenetics.

Current Projects

My current project is focused on modeling food webs based on general ecological rules and mechanistic processes and developing metrics which can measure various aspects of such ecological systems within a stable isotope mixing model framework in R (SIAR). Stable isotopes allow for the construction of throphic webs based on the isotopic signature of consumers and their prey with bayesian approaches also capturing the variation of consumers isotopic signatures which is due to both source isotopic signature and consumer food preference variation. This variation potentially contains important information such as the species niche width in relation to food choice, shifts in basal resource signature or food choices over time or the degree of individual specialization, the apparent preference of individuals within a species to only consume a sub-sample of the entire species prey choice, with a species. Developing tools which can quantitatively measure the degree of various aspects of a community can hence allow for the comparison of various communities will allow for a greater understanding of the structure and dynamics of these systems.