Gary G. Mittlebach
Professor
Ph.D. Michigan State University, 1980
W. K. Kellogg Biological Station
Office Telephone: 269-671-2216
mittelbach@kbs.msu.edu
Research website
Abundance and Diversity of Species in Nature
As a community ecologist, I am interested in the forces that regulate the abundance and diversity of species in nature. My past research has focused on aquatic communities, particularly fish. My collaborators and I have studied the interactions between fishes in local lakes (e.g., bluegill, bass) as a model system to determine how changes in a fish's diet and habitat during ontogeny (ontogenetic niche shifts) and how size-dependent interactions (competition, predation) affect patterns of fish species abundance and distribution. Results of this research are useful both in a basic, ecological sense and with regard to the management of sport fishes.
More recently, I have become interested in patterns of species diversity across geographical scales, particularly with regard to how species richness varies with climate and productivity. At the local and regional scale, species richness is often a hump-shaped function of productivity, whereas at continental to global scales, species richness and productivity tend to be positively related (e.g., the latitudinal gradient in species richness). One hypothesis for the local, hump-shaped relationship is that resource heterogeneity drives species diversity and that resource heterogeneity varies with productivity. I am working with two plant ecologists, Katherine Gross and Heather Reynolds, to test this hypothesis using field experiments conducted in a sand prairie community near Lake Michigan. I am also interested in broad-scale patterns of diversity in both plants and animals. I am particularly interested in exploring how geographical variation in speciation rates may act to enhance gradients in species richness across latitude.
Representative Publications
Houseman, G.R., G.G. Mittelbach, H.L. Reynolds, and K.L. Gross. Perturbations alter community convergence, divergence, and formation of multiple community states. Ecology (in press).
Garcia, E.A. and G.G. Mittelbach. Regional coexistence and local dominance in Chaoborus: species sorting along a predation gradient. Ecology (in press).
Wojdak, J. M. and G. G. Mittelbach. 2007. Consequences of niche overlap for ecosystem functioning: an experimental test with pond grazers. Ecology 88:2072-2083.
Mittelbach, G.G., D. Schemske, H.V. Cornell et al. 2007. Evolution and the latitudinal diversity gradient: speciation, extinction, and biogeography. Ecology Letters 10:315-335.
Mittelbach, G. G., E. A. Garcia, and Y. Taniguchi. 2006. Fish reintroductions reveal smooth transitions between lake community states. Ecology 87: 312-318.