Research Interests

The ultimate goal of my research is to understand how ecological communities are assembled. Community assembly provides a framework in which to consider how processes operating at a variety of temporal, spatial, and organizational scales affect, and are affected by, species distribution and abundance. Community assembly is of applied as well as fundamental interest. For instance, ecological restoration is a practical test of our understanding of community assembly. If we understand how communities are assembled, we should be able to re-assemble them (or explain why this is impossible).

I study community assembly using a combination of experiments and mathematical theory. My work is question-driven, which means I choose my questions first, and then choose a system appropriate for answering those questions. My experiments use tractable model systems (predominantly microbial systems) that facilitate collection of long-term population dynamic data, since community assembly is a long-term process.

Current or planned projects in my lab address questions such as: By what mechanisms does dispersal affect the outcome of competition in patchy habitats? How do enrichment and dispersal interact to generate spatial and temporal variation in community structure along enrichment gradients? How does the structure of the background community affect the kind of population dynamics exhibited a given species (e.g., stage-structured cycles vs. predator-prey cycles), and what are the community-level consequences of different kinds of population dynamics? .

Courses Taught

Graduate Students

Awards

2007 - British Ecological society Early Career Project Award
2006 - Alberta Ingenuity New Faculty Award Holder 
2005 - Alberta Ingenuity Fund New Faculty Award (2005-2007)

Selected publications

• Fox, J. W. , and W. S. Harpole. In press. Revealing how species' traits affect ecosystem function: the trait-based Price Equation partition. Ecology.
• Vasseur, D., and J. W. Fox. 2007. Environmental fluctuations can stabilize food web dynamics by increasing synchrony. Ecology Letters 10:1066-1074.
• Fox, J. W. 2007. Testing the mechanisms by which source-sink dynamics alter competitive outcomes in a model system. American Naturalist 170:396-408.
• Fox, J. W. 2007. Within-trophic level diversity, density compensation, and the dynamics of trophic cascades. Oikos 116:189-200.
• Fox, J. W. 2006. Using the Price Equation to partition the effects of biodiversity loss on ecosystem function. Ecology 87:2687-2696.
• Fox, J. W., and C. Barreto. 2006. Surprising competitive coexistence in a classic model system. Community Ecology 7:143-154.
• Fox, J. W. 2006. Current food web models cannot explain the overall topological structure of observed food webs. Oikos 115:97-109.
• Fox, J. W. , and D. S. Srivastava. 2006. Predicting local-regional richness relationships using island biogeography models. Oikos 113:376-382.
• Fox, J. W. 2005. Biodiversity, food web structure, and the partitioning of biomass within and among trophic levels. Pp. 283-294 in: Dynamic Food Webs, P. de Ruiter, J. C. Moore, and V. Wolters, eds. Academic Press.
• Fox, J. W. 2005. Interpreting the “selection effect” of biodiversity on ecosystem function. Ecology Letters 8:846-856.
• Fox, J. W. 2005 Biodiversity, food web structure, and the partitioning of biomass within and among trophic levels. In: Dynamic Food Webs, P. de Ruiter, J. C. Moore, and V. Wolters, eds. Academic Press. In press.
• Fox, J. W. 2005 Interpreting the ‘selection effect’ of biodiversity on ecosystem function. Ecology Letters 8:846-856.
• Berlow, E., A.-M. Neutel, J. Cohen, P. de Ruiter, B. Ebenman, J. W. Fox, et al. 2004 Interaction strengths in food webs: issues and opportunities. Journal of Animal Ecology 73:585-598.