Dr. Robert D. Holt

personal site

Professor and
Arthur R. Marshall, Jr., Chair in Ecology
Ph.D. Harvard University

111 Bartram
P.O. Box 118525
Gainesville, FL
32611-8525
Voice: (352) 392-6917
Fax: (352) 392-3704
rdholt@zoology.ufl.edu

Research Interests

My core personal research focuses on theoretical and conceptual issues at the population and community levels of ecological organization, and on the task of linking ecology with evolutionary biology. In addition to basic research, I am interested in bringing modern ecological theory to bear on significant applied problems, particularly in conservation biology. I have also carried out large-scale experiments on habitat fragmentation. My students include both theoreticians and empirical, experimental ecologists. I have historically collaborated with many faculty at a wide range of institutions, both inside and outside the USA.

Students Currently Supervised

Tania Kim (MS/PhD)
I am a field ecologist with interests in plant-insect interactions, community ecology, and conservation biology. For my graduate research project, I am interested in the effects of insect herbivores on oak growth, reproduction, and competition following fire in the Florida scrub. I am also interested in looking at spatial patterns of gall infestation on Quercus geminata by cynipid wasps and cecidomyiid flies.

Tristan Kimbrell (Ph.D.)
My research is specifically concerned with how individual behavioral responses to source and sink habitats influence population dynamics, and how populations respond evolutionarily to source and sink habitats. Currently working on an individual-based model of cheetahs in Serengeti National Park. In the future, I hope to model the rate of adaptation of a population in a sink habitat with recurrent immigration of developmentally stable individuals from a source habitat.

Representative Publications

Knight, T.M., M.W. McCoy, J.M. Chase, K.A. McCoy and R.D. Holt. 2005. Trophic cascades across ecosystems. Nature 437:880-884 (and electronic supplement).

Cumming, G. S., G. Barnes, M. Binford, R.D. Holt, S. Perez, M. Schmink, K. E. Sieving, and J. Southworth. 2005. An exploratory framework for the empirical measurement of resilience in ecosystems. Ecosystems 8(8): 975-987.

Holt, R.D. 2006. Making a virtue out of a necessity: Hurricanes and the resilience of island communities. PNAS 103: 2005-2006.

Dennehy, J.J., N.A. Friedenberg, R.D. Holt and P.E. Turner. 2006. Viral ecology and the maintenance of novel host use. American Naturalist 167(3): 429-439.

Keesing, F, R.D. Holt and R.S. Ostfeld. 2006. Effects of species diversity on disease risk. Ecology Letters 9(4): 485-498.

Holt, R.D. and A.P. Dobson. 2006. Introduction: Extending the principles of community ecology to address the epidemiology of host-pathogen communities. In Disease Ecology: Community Structure and Pathogen Dynamics, S.K. Collinge and C. Ray, eds. Oxford University Press.

Harding, K.C., J.M. McNamara, and R.D. Holt. 2006. Understanding invasions in patchy habitats through metapopulation theory. Pages371-403 in Conceptual ecology and invasion biology: reciprocal approaches to nature, M. Cadotte and T. Fukami, eds.