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Contact information:
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Research interests:
I
am interested in the ways in which trophic interactions and resource
productivity influence community composition. My approach to
understanding communities lies at the interface between quantitative
ecological
theory and real systems. In my current work, I am developing
community theory that extends existing
trophic cascade theory to allow within-trophic level compensation and
to
account for whole-community stoichiometric constraints. This
spring, I will begin to test this theory with broad-scale experiments
in West Coast grasslands,
focusing on the community-level (primarily plant and insect) effects of
altered nitrogen deposition and exotic plant invasions. I am also
collaborating with several researchers on a project to examine the
long-term implications of an aphid-vectored disease, Barley Yellow
Dwarf Virus, on West Coast grassland community composition.
My recent projects include synthesizing the divergent theoretical
literature on
intraguild
predation and testing this theory with empirical data to examine the
role of
intraguild predation in structuring communities. My other
work
includes examining where and why trophic cascades occur, mechanisms of
coexistence in biological control, and top-down and bottom-up effects
in food
webs.
I
have done quite a bit of work examining the mechanisms of coexistence
of two
parasitoids: Aphytis melinus and Encarsia
perniciosi. These are two parasitoid wasps involved in
biological
control of
Publications:
Borer, E. T., E. W.
Seabloom, J. B. Shurin, K.E. Anderson, C. A. Blanchette, B. Broitman,
S. D.
Cooper, B.S. Halpern. In press. What determines the
strength of a trophic
cascade? Ecology.
Borer,
E. T., W.W. Murdoch, and
S.L. Swarbrick. 2004. Parasitoid coexistence: Linking spatial
field
patterns with mechanism. Ecology
85(3):667-678.
Gram, W.
K., E. T. Borer, K. L.
Cottingham, E. W. Seabloom, V. L. Boucher, L. Goldwasser, F. Micheli,
B. E.
Kendall, and R. S. Burton. 2004. Distribution of plants in
a
Borer,
E. T., C. J. Briggs, W.W. Murdoch, and S.L.
Swarbrick. 2003. Testing intraguild predation theory in a
field
system: Does numerical dominance shift along a gradient of
productivity? Ecology
Letters 6:929-935.
Seabloom,
E. W., E. T. Borer,
V. Boucher, K. L. Cottingham, W. K. Gram, B. E. Kendall, L. Goldwasser,
F.
Micheli, and R. S. Burton. 2003. Competition, seed
limitation,
disturbance, and reestablishment of
Borer,
E. T. 2002. Larval competition
of guild members: implications for coexistence
via intraguild predation. Journal
of Animal Ecology 71: 957-965.
Borer,
E. T., K. Anderson, C. A.
Blanchette, B. Broitman, S. D. Cooper, B. Halpern, E. W. Seabloom, J.
B.
Shurin. 2002. Topological approaches to food web analyses:
a few
modifications may improve our insights. Oikos
99: 398-403.
Shurin,
J. B., E. T. Borer, E. W.
Seabloom, K. Anderson, C. A. Blanchette, B. Broitman, S. D. Cooper, B.
Halpern. 2002. A cross-ecosystem comparison of the strength
of
trophic cascades. Ecology
Letters 5:785-791.
Collins,
J. P., A. P. Kinzig,
N. B. Grimm, W. F. Fagan, D. Hope, J. Wu, and E. T. Borer. 2000. A new
urban
ecology. American Scientist
88: 416-425
(.pdf file does not include figures).
Chance,
B., E. Borer, A. Evans, G.
Holtom, J. Kent, M. Maris, K. Mccully, J. Northrop, M. Shinkwin. 1988.
Optical and
nuclear magnetic resonance studies of hypoxia in human tissue and
tumors. Annals
of the
Weiss,
J., E. Borer, and E. Brozyna.
1988. The use of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imagery) in diagnosis of TMJ
disease.