Shannon Murphy

My research program is integrative, drawing on techniques and theory developed in a variety of disciplines including anatomy, behavior, biogeochemistry, botany, chemistry, ecology, entomology and evolutionary biology. Students in my lab and I study the ecology and evolution of interactions between plants and insects, and together we investigate how these interactions are affected by global change. At the scale of populations and species, we are interested in why some herbivorous insects are specialists while others are generalists and how each of these groups choose their host plants. At the scale of communities, we study how natural enemies affect community structure and population dynamics of herbivorous insects. Finally, at the ecosystem scale, we have projects that investigate how nutrient cycling, resource subsidies and other disturbances may affect interactions between herbivorous insects and their host plants directly as well as indirectly by altering the impact that natural enemies and detritivores have on populations of herbivores. At all scales, we are interested in how global change affects species interactions.