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Past Lotka & Volterra Student Award Recipients

2022

Volterra Prize for the Best Theoretical Talk:
Sarah McPeek, University of Virginia
Resource evolution shapes the contemporary ecology of mutualisms in communities
Coauthors: Mark McPeek, and Judith Bronstein
Lotka Prize for the Best Theoretical Poster:
Aarshi Jain, University of California, Los Angeles
Modeling bacteria-enhanced thermal tolerance in marine phytoplankton
Coauthor: Colin Kremer
-and-
Jakob Karee-Rasmussen, University of California, Santa Barbara
Modeling food-dependent symbiosis in Exaiptasia pallida
Coauthor: Ferdinand Pfab, and Holly Moeller

2021

Volterra Prize:
Lucas Medeiros, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ranking species based on sensitivity to perturbations under non-equilibrium community dynamics
Coauthors: Vasilis Dakos, George Sugihara, and Serguei Saavedra
Lotka Prize:
Janette Davidson, University of Wyoming
Resistance and resilience to invasion is stronger in synchronous than compensatory communities
Coauthor: Lauren G. Shoemaker

2020

Ashwini Ramesh, Volterra Award for Best Talk
Indiana University Bloomington
Within-host parasite dynamics: Insights from food web modules and feedback loops
Coauthor: Spencer Hall

Christina Hernandez, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Maternal effect senescence and fitness: A demographic analysis of a novel model organism
Coauthors: Silke F. van Daalen, Hal Caswell, Michael G. Neubert, Kristin E. Gribble

2019

Micah Brush, Volterra Award for Best Talk
University of California Berkeley
The effects of density dependence on spatial aggregation in the maximum entropy theory of ecology
Coauthors: John Harte, Juliette Franzman, and Kaito Umemura

Emerson Arehart, Lotka Award for Best Poster
University of Utah
Quantifying the fitness benefit of sensory learning as a function of environmental complexity
Coauthor: Frederick R. Adler

2018

Kayla R. Sale-Hale, Volterra Award for Best Talk
University of Michigan
Mutualism in food webs: Persistent pollinators facilitate positive diversity-stability relationships
Coauthors: Fernanda S. Valdovinos and Neo D. Martinez

John Park, Lotka Award for Best Poster
University of Chicago
Evolution of life histories in cyclical environments: theory and test in a tidepool copepod
Coauthors: Greg Dwyer and J. Timothy Wootton

2017

Evan Johnson, Lotka Award for Best Poster
WK Kellogg Biological Station
Distance makes the heart grow stronger: How space makes mutualisms robust to cheaters
Co-author: Simon Stump and Christopher Klausmeier

Pratha Sah, Volterra Award for Best Talk
Georgetown University
Disease implications of animal social organization and network structure: A quantitative analysis
Co-authors: Shweta Bansal and Janet Mann

2016

Gregory Backus, Lotka Award for Best Poster
North Carolina State University
Genetically engineered mice for eradicating invasive mouse populations: Estimating the efficiency and ecological impacts
Co-author: Kevin Gross

Nikunj Goel, Volterra Award for Best Talk
Yale University
Spatiotemporal dynamics of savanna-forest distribution
Co-authors: Vishwesha Guttal, Thierry Emonet, Simon Levin and A. Carla Staver

2015

Geoffrey Legault, Lotka Award for Best Poster
University of Colorado, Boulder
The distribution of birth and death in Daphnia magna: Implications for stochastic models
Co-authors: Caroline Tucker and Brett Melbourne

Po-Ju Ke, Volterra Award for Best Talk
Stanford University
Herbivory-pollination coupling mediated by ontogenetic change in interaction type stabilizes community dynamics
Co-author: Takefumi Nakazawa

2014

Sean Hayes, Lotka Award for Best Poster
University of California, Riverside
Dispersal network structure predicts metacommunity dynamics
Co-author: Kurt Anderson

Holly Moeller, Volterra Award for Best Talk
Stanford University
Optimal investment in a multi-mutualist system: Tree maintenance of ectomycorrhizal fungal diversity
Co-author: Michael Neubert

2013

Jaime Ashander, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis, CA
Understanding the joint effects of plastic and evolutionary change on demography from time series data
Advisor: Marissa Baskett

Julie Rushmore, Volterra Award for Best Talk
Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Network-based vaccination improves prospects for disease control in wild chimpanzee
Co-author: Damien Caillaud, Richard J. Hall, Rebecca M. Stumpf, Lauren Ancel Meyers, Sonia Altizer

2012

Emily Moberg, Lotka Award for Best Poster
MIT-WHOI Joint Program
The cost of protecting biodiversity in harvested metacommunities
Co-author: Michael Neubert

Colin Olito, Volterra Award for Best Talk
University of Calgary
Using a bottom-up model of plant-pollinator interaction networks to investigate the role of foraging decisions vs. topological constraints in determining network structure
Co-author: Stephen Hausch

2011

Stacy Scholle, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Duke University
The effect of epidemiological dynamics on viral evolutionary rates
Co-author: Katia Koelle

Carl Boettiger, Volterra Award for Best Talk
Limits to the detection of early warning signals of population collapse
Co-author: Alan Hastings

2010

Yun Tao, Lotka Award for Best Poster
University of California-Davis
Information ecology: A theoretical analysis of seasonality, movement behavior, and population dynamics

Ben C. Nolting, Volterra Award for Best Talk: Co-winners!
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The role of environmental stochasticity in reducing the amplitude of population fluctuations
Co-author: Chad E. Brassil

György Barabás, Volterra Award for Best Talk: Co-winners!
University of Michigan
How should temporal niche segregation be defined?
Co-authors: Aaron A. King, Geza Meszena and Annette Ostling

2009

Andres Baeza, Lotka Award for Best Poster
University of Michigan
On the emergence of conservation behavior in a simple model of land-use with ecosystem services.
Co-authors: Mercedes Pascual and Andy Dobson.

Alex Perkins, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
University of California, Davis
Evolutionarily labile species interactions and spatial spread dynamics of invasions.
Co-author: Alan Hastings

2008

Clay Cressler, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Foraging-predation risk tradeoff governs evolution of inducible defenses.
Co-author: Aaron King

Vishwesha Guttal, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
Spatial indicators of catastrophic regime shifts in ecological systems.
Co-author: C. Jayaprakash

2007

Sharon Martinson, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Dartmouth College
A multiple equilibria model for Dendroctonus frontalis which includes predation and competition.
Co-author: Matthew P. Ayres

Colin Kremer, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
State University of New York at Geneseo (undergraduate student)
Chaotic dynamics lost in small-world network meta-populations
Co-authors: Chris C. Leary, Gary W. Towsley, Gregg Hartvigsen

2006

Sean Michaletz, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
University of Calgary
A heat transfer model of crown scorch in forest fires

2005

Karen Abbott, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
University of Chicago
Food limitation and complex dynamics in herbivorous insects

2004

Allison Shaw, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Brown University / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (undergraduate student)
Invasion dynamics in sex-structured populations

Katharina V. Koelle, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
University of Michigan
Between-strain competition for susceptible hosts in host-pathogen systems with seasonal dynamics

2003

Curtis A. Smith, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Duke University
Evolution of dispersal distance in a predator-prey system Living on the edge of criticality

Chad Brassil, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
University of Toronto
The Similar Effect of Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Cycles on Mean Population Densities

2002

Caz Taylor, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Consequences of an Allee effect on the invasion of Spartina alterniflora in Willapa Bay, WA

John Haskell, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
Home range scaling in fractal environments

2001

Jennifer A. Nelson, Lotka Award for Best Poster
Duke University
Stability Effects due to Differences in Predator and Prey Spatial Scales

Michael Dietze, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
The Extinction Debt Revisited: Population Dynamics in a Point-Process Model

2000

Derek Johnson, Lotka Award for Best Poster
University of Miami
Patch size-dependent migration and semi-synchronous extinction in a beetle metapopulation.

Juan Manuel Morales, Volterra Award for Best Oral Presentation
University of Connecticut
Scaling-up movements in heterogeneous landscapes: importance of behavior.

 

Last updated on: September 12, 2022