ELLEN DAMSCHEN
Assistant Professor
 
Dr. Ellen Damschen
Washington University
Department of Biology
1 Brookings Drive
Campus Box 1137
St. Louis, MO 63130
Campus Office: McDonnell Hall 409
E-mail:damschen@wustl.edu
Phone: (314) 935-9106
Fax: (314) 935-4432

I am an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at Washington University in St. Louis. As an ecologist and conservation biologist, I am interested in determining when environmental and spatial processes interact to determine community composition, how are humans changing these interactions, and what these changes mean for global biodiversity. Research in my lab lies at the intersection of providing empirical tests of ecological theory and providing scientific information to conservation managers. Current projects in the Damschen Lab include:

  1. How corridors and edge effects affect plant populations and communities
  2. How wind dynamics and seed dispersal are affected by habitat heterogeneity
  3. If species traits can predict responses to landscape fragmentation
  4. How climate change affects edaphic endemic plants
  5. What controls edaphic endemic plant diversity
  6. How local and landscape factors affect community restoration
  7. How connectivity varies across ecosystems
Our study sites include southeastern longleaf pine woodlands (Savannah River Site, SC, Fort Bragg, NC, Fort Stewart, GA); the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains in southwestern Oregon; the kelp forests of the Santa Barbara Channel; the Ozark glades across Missouri, and the Tyson Research Center near St. Louis, Missouri.

See Research for more complete descriptions of work in the lab.

Publications (click [pdf] for reprints)

In Press:

Haddad, N.M., B. Hudgens, E.I. Damschen*, D.J. Levey*, J.L. Orrock*, J.J. Tewksbury*, and A.J. Weldon* (*=alphabetical authorship after first two authors).  In Press.  Assessing positive and negative ecological effects of corridors.  In J. Liu, V. Hull, A. Morzillo, and J. Wiens, Sources, sinks, and sustainability across landscapes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Brudvig, L.A., E.I. Damschen, J.J. Tewksbury, N.M. Haddad, and D.J. Levey. 2009. Landscape connectivity promotes plant biodiversity spillover into non-target habitats. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 9328-9332. [pdf]

Harrison, S., E. Damschen, B.M. Going. 2009. Climate Gradients, Climate Change, and Special Edaphic Floras. Northeastern Naturalist 16 (Special Issue 5): 121-130.

Damschen, E.I., L.A. Brudvig*, N.M. Haddad*, D.L. Levey*, J.L. Orrock*, and J.J. Tewksbury* (*=alphabetical authorship after first author). 2008. The movement ecology and dynamics of plant communities in fragmented landscapes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(49):19078-19083. [pdf] [pdf supporting information]

Damschen, E.I.  2007. Book Review: Hierarchical modeling for the environmental sciences: statistical methods
and applications. Quarterly Review of Biology 82(3):299.

Orrock, J.L., E.I. Damschen. 2007. The effect of burial depth on seed removal of Phytolacca americana. Southeastern Naturalist. 6(1):151-158. [PDF]

Wyer, M., D. Murphy-Medley, E.I. Damschen, K. M. Rosenfeld, and T. Wentworth. 2007. No quick fixes: Adding content about women to ecology course materials. Psychology of Women Quarterly. [PDF]

Damschen, E.I., N.M. Haddad, J.L. Orrock, J.J. Tewksbury, and D.J. Levey. 2006. Corridors increase plant species richness at large scales. Science. [PDF] [PDF Supp. Materials]

Orrock, J.L., D.J. Levey, B.J. Danielson, and E.I. Damschen. 2006. Seed predation, not seed dispersal, explains the landscape-level abundance of an early-successional plant. Journal of Ecology 94:838-845. [PDF]

Damschen, E.I., K.M. Rosenfeld, M. Wyer, D. Murphy-Medley, T.R. Wentworth, and N.M. Haddad. 2006. Women in Ecology. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4(1):9-10. [PDF]

Damschen, E.I., K.M. Rosenfeld, M. Wyer, D. Murphy-Medley, T.R. Wentworth, and N.M. Haddad. 2005. Visibility matters: Student knowledge of women's contributions to ecology. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3(4): 212-219. [PDF]

Orrock, J.L, and E.I. Damschen. 2005. Fungi-mediated mortality of seeds of two oldfield plant species. Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 132:613-617. [PDF]

Orrock, J.L, and E.I. Damschen. 2005. Corridors cause differential seed predation. Ecological Applications 15(3): 793-798. [PDF]

Louda, S.M., A.M. Parkhurst, K.L. Bradley, E. Bakker, A. Joern, J. Knops, E.I. Damschen, and L.M. Young. 2004. Spatial heterogeneity, not visitation bias, dominates variation in herbivory: Reply. Ecology 85(10): 2906-2910. [PDF]

Bradley, K.L., E. I. Damschen, L. M. Young, D. Kuefler, S. Went, G. Wray, N. M. Haddad, J. M. H. Knops, S. M. Louda. 2003. Spatial heterogeneity, not visitation bias, dominates variation in herbivory. Ecology 84(8): 2214-2221. [PDF]

Tewksbury, J.J., D. J. Levey, N. M. Haddad, S. Sargent, J. L. Orrock, A. Weldon, B. J. Danielson, J. Brinkerhoff, E.I. Damschen , and P. Townsend. 2002. Corridors affect plants, animals, and their interactions in fragmented landscapes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 99(20): 12923-12926. Awarded the 2002 Outstanding Paper in Landscape Ecology, International Association of Landscape Ecology. [PDF]

 

In Revision:

Damschen, E.I., S. Harrison, and J.B. Grace. Climate Change Effects on an Endemic-Rich Edaphic Flora. Ecology.

 

In Review:

Damschen, E.I., K.M. Kostelnik, N.M. Haddad, and T.R. Wentworth.  How connectivity affects seed bank recolonization in an experimental landscape.

Damschen, E.I., and L.A. Brudvig.  Connectivity alters local-regional richness relationships over time.

Harrison S., and E.I. Damschen.  Land use and climate interact to diminish understory diversity in a species-rich forest ecosystem (Klamath-Siskiyou Mts, OR, USA). 

Brudvig., L.A., and E.I. Damschen. Land-use history, historical connectivity, and land management interact to determine longleaf pine woodland understory richness and composition.

Damschen, E.I. Climate change and harsh environments.  In: S. Harrison and N. Rajakaruna, Serpentine: A Model for Evolution and Ecology. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Grace, J.B., S. Harrison, E.I. Damschen.  Plant species richness on environmental gradients: What have we learned since the days of R.H. Whittaker? 

Hawkins B.A., C.M. McCain, T.J. Davies, L.B. Buckley, B. Anacker, H.V. Cornell, E.I. Damschen, J.A.Grytnes, S.P. Harrison , R.D. Holt, N.J.B. Kraft, and P.R. Stephens.  Multiple evolutionary pathways to climate-induced convergence of the global diversity gradients of birds and mammals. 

Buckley, L.B., T.J. Davies, D.D. Ackerly, N.J.B. Kraft, S.P. Harrison, B.L. Anacker, H.V. Cornell, E.I. Damschen, J.A. Grytnes, B.A. Hawkins, C.M. McCain, P.R. Stephens, and J.J. Wiens.  Mammalian climate-diversity gradients: an inevitable product of aggregating clades with distinct evolutionary histories?

Website © 2005 Ellen Damschen