Details for Reproductive asynchrony, population density and extinction risk

Faculty:	Fagan, William
Department:	Biology
Lab:
Campus Phone:	301-405-4672
Campus Address:	3235 Biology-Psychology Bldg.
Email:	bfagan@umd.edu
Project Details: The goal of this project is to search for a connection between reproductive asynchrony, a life history trait that occurs when individuals in a population are reproductively active for only a portion of the population-level breeding period, and population density. A previous theoretical study showed that reproductive asynchrony could cause a population to go extinct if density was low. The results suggested that high population density could buffer a population against the negative effects of asynchrony. Here we seek to test that prediction with empirical data on the relationship between degree of asynchrony and population density from a range of naturally occurring populations. The student would help to build a database of reproductive pheonology and population density for a variety of species and may assist in the statistical analysis of this database.
Required Skills:	General ecology or evolutionary biology; good library skills; basic familiarity with Excel spreadsheets
Recommended Skills:	General statistics
Other Information: