Timothy Wootton, Ph.D. Professor Department of Ecology and Evolution Committee on Evolutionary Biology Office: Zoology 401D | Phone: 773-702-2773 | Fax: 773-702-9740 | email: twootton(at)uchicago(dot)edu Subjects: Multi-species interactions, extinction processes and consequences, synthesis of multiple ecological processes, marine and aquatic ecology, avian ecology. Click here for a video clip outlining some of my research projects and field sites… Click here for Lab web page

Research Interests

My research focuses on the ecological and evolutionary consequences of interactions among organisms. My work centers on how multi-species systems function and on evaluating methods that might predict how such systems will respond to environmental change, particularly in regard to species extinctions and introductions. I am also interested in related areas in evolutionary ecology. I work in several different systems, and study a range of taxa. My general approach tests questions or models of broad theoretical interest, using field experiments, observations of large-scale species introductions, and between-system comparisons. Currently, my research focuses on rocky intertidal marine communities and rivers, which serve as model experimental systems for ecology.

Specific research includes: 1) Developing and testing dynamic models of food webs that synthesize species interactions, productivity rates and disturbance regime. 2) Identifying observational and experimental approaches that predict the strength of species interactions in natural communities. 3) Testing forest simulator-type models in experimentally-tractable intertidal systems. 4) Exploring experimentally the importance of genetic and demographic factors on extinction risk in small populations. 5) Studying whole-ecosystem response to large-scale management programs derived by focusing on single species, particularly in salmon-bearing rivers of western North America. 6) Documenting changes in ocean pH through time (ocean acidification) and revealing its effects in complex coastal ecosystems. 7) Investigating character displacement in competing species following the invasion of house finches across the eastern U.S.

I expect my students to develop a broad perspective on ecology and evolution, to engage in research rooted solidly in empiricism but with an eye toward its wider theoretical and practical implications, and to maintain a healthy knowledge of natural history. I particularly encourage applications from students with interests in marine or aquatic ecology.

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Recent Publications

Wootton, J. T., 1987. Interspecific competition between introduced House Finch populations and two associated passerine species Oecologia (Berlin) 71:325-331.

Wootton, J. T., 1987. The effects of body mass, phylogeny, habitat and trophic level on mammalian age at first reproduction. Evolution 41:732-749.

Wootton, J. T., 1992. Indirect effects, prey susceptibility, and habitat selection: impacts of birds on limpets and algae. Ecology 73:981-991.

Wootton, J. T., and D. A. Bell, 1992. A metapopulation model of the Peregrine Falcon in California: viability and management strategies. Ecological Applications 2:307-321.

Wootton, J. T., and M. P. Oemke, 1992. Latitudinal differences in fish community trophic structure and the role of fish herbivory in a Costa Rican stream. Environmental Biology of Fishes 35:311-319.

Wootton, J. T., 1993. Indirect effects and habitat use in an intertidal community: interaction chains and interaction modifications. American Naturalist 141:71-89.

Wootton, J. T., and M. E. Power, 1993. Productivity, consumers, and the structure of a river food chain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 90:1384-1387.

Wootton, J. T., 1994. Predicting direct and indirect effects: an integrated approach using experiments and path analysis. Ecology 75:151-165.

Wootton, J. T., 1994. The nature and consequences of indirect effects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 25:443-466.

Wootton, J. T., M. E. Power, and M. S. Parker, 1996. Effects of disturbance on river food webs. Science 273:1558-1561.

Wootton, J. T., 1998. Effects of disturbance on species diversity: a multi-trophic perspective. American Naturalist 152:803-825.

Wootton, J. T., 2001. Prediction in complex communities: analysis of empirically-derived Markov models. Ecology 82:580-598.

Wootton, J. T., 2001. Local interactions predict large-scale pattern in an empirically-derived cellular automata. Nature 413:841-843.

Wootton, J. T., 2004. Markov chain models predict the consequences of experimental extinctions. Ecology Letters 7:653-660.

Tsao, J. I., J. T. Wootton, J. Bunikis, M. G. Luna, D. Fish, and A. G. Barbour. 2004. An ecological approach to preventing human infection: vaccinating wild mouse reservoirs intervenes in the Lyme disease cycle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 52:18159-18164.

Wootton, J. T. 2005. Field-parameterization and experimental test of the neutral theory of biodiversity. Nature 433:309-312

Wootton, J. T., and M. Emmerson. 2005. Measurement of interaction strength in nature. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 36:In Press.

Novak, M., and Wootton, J. T., 2008. Estimating the nonlinear interaction strengths: an observational method for species-rich food webs. Ecology 89:2083-2089.

Wooton, J. T., Pfister, C.A., Forester, J.D., 2008. Dynamical patterns and ecological impacts of ocean pH in a high-resolution, multi-year dataset. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:18848-18853