Education

B.A., Biology. 2009. Colby College, Waterville, Maine.

Research Interests

I am broadly interested in the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services. What is biodiversity and how do we measure it? What exactly are the contributions of biodiversity to ecosystem properties, and can they be generalized across organisms and systems? In a changing world, what are the consequences of biodiversity loss and how can we best manage natural systems to conserve our planet? 

My dissertation research focuses on the emerging concept of functional diversity, which attempts to quantify biodiversity not in terms of evolutionary units (i.e., species), but in terms of their functional traits (or how they operate in their environment). I will investigate the mathematical properties of multivariate functional diversity indices, use large data sets to look at global and regional patterns in fish and macroinvertebrate functional diversity, and perform experimental manipulations to show how functional diversity influences ecosystem functioning.

Cirriculum Vitae

Click below to download the latest version of my CV:

Lefcheck_CV.pdf