Associate Professor of Biology
Department of Biology
The University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677
TEL: (662) 915-6647
FAX: (662) 915-5144
Email: dreed@olemiss.edu

EDUCATION:
Ph.D. 1998. University of Houston, Ecology and Evolution
B.B.A. 1988. Lincoln Memorial University, Economics and Statistics.

• Current/Recent Research Projects
• Possible Research Projects for students in my lab
• Publications

1) In collaboration with Dr. Gail Stratton (http://home.olemiss.edu/~byges/) and numerous graduate and undergraduate students, we have recently completed a three-year study examining the relationships among population size, various measures of genetic diversity, and fitness in two species of wolf spider. For examples, see Reed et al. (2007a,b) and Reed and Nicholas (2008).

2) Dr. Amy Nicholas completed her Ph.D. in June 2007. Her project examined the evolution of behavior and the allocation of maternal reproductive investment in wolf spiders. Amy has two major foci to her research. One focus is on working out the ecological determinates of maternal investment in wolf and fishing spiders, with special interest in the trade-off between number and size of offspring. Her second focus is on the evolution of mating behavior in the wolf spider Rabidosa punctulata and the proximate mechanisms underlying the decision of males of this species to use one of two dichotomous mating strategies (courtship versus grapple). Amy is also involved with projects examining life history and morphological differences among potential species in the genus Hogna.

3) Drew Hataway is a Ph.D candidate working on how hurricanes, habitat fragmentation, and anthropogenic disturbances have interacted to shape the population dynamics and population genetics of a specialist spider of the Northern Gulf Coast ecosystem. Extreme environmental perturbations (catastrophes) have a profound impact on the probability of population/species extinction. Hurricanes represent an interesting category of catastrophe because of their relatively frequent occurrence, ability to depress population size over large geographic areas for extended periods of time, and the spatial heterogeneity in the impacts from a single hurricane. In addition to the potential effects of natural disturbances such as hurricanes, anthropogenic influences such as habitat degradation and fragmentation greatly influence population viability. Human disturbances differ from natural disturbances, in part, because the former represent a novel perturbation of that ecosystem to which species are not adapted and the environmental changes may occur too rapidly for species to evolve sufficiently to avoid extinction.

The research has four major objectives. (1) Determine the impact of hurricanes on a rare species of spider limited to the highly impacted NGC dune ecosystem. (2) Determine the evolved mechanisms by which A. sanctaerosae avoids regional extinction during direct hits on their habitat from high intensity hurricanes. This is important for determining critical habitat for beach-specific species. (3) Determine the current population structure and historical structure in the species-wide metapopulation of A. sanctaerosae using genetic data from microsatellites. (4) Examine the interactions between hurricanes and the level of habitat fragmentation and disturbance.

4) Wei ‘Joy’ Liao is a Ph.D. candidate who is building stochastic computer simulations. Her first model looks at time until extinction in populations with and without inbreeding-stress interactions. Preliminary data suggests that median time to extinction is shortened by 23% when the interaction is included, and that this is true for a range of values for carrying capacity, frequency of occurrence for the stressful environment, and number of lethal equivalents. Her second model will examine the evolution of fitness, genetic diversity, and genetic correlations when there are multiple stresses (e.g., drought, disease) and new mutations have different correlation structures for the selection coefficients in the different environmental states or even possibly different signs (i.e., beneficial in one environmental state and deleterious in another).

5) Michelle Speicher is a new Ph.D. student in my lab. She is interested in using game theory to examine the evolution and consequences of behavior on metapopulation dynamics in newly fragmented habitats.

6) Apinya Chaitae (หนู): Apinya will begin work on her Masters degree in August 2008. She is interested in how harvesting impacts the viability of snake populations in Thailand.

7) Ken Sterling: Ken will begin work on his Masters degree in August 2008. In collaboration with Dr. Mel Warren (USDA; http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/staff/631), Ken will study the ecology and life history of the locally endemic Yazoo darter.
In addition to the above I am doing ongoing volunteer work for the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (Species Survival Commission/World Conservation Union) (http://www.cbsg.org/), as a population modeler and workshop facilitator. I have been involved with Population and Habitat Viability Assessments (PHVA) for the Alabama Beach Mouse (Peromyscus polionotus ammobates), the Formosan pangolin (Manis pentadactyla pentadactyla), the Indonesian proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus), the Asiatic golden cat (Catopuma temminckii), the Tsushima leopard cat (Felis bengalensis euptilura), the Okinawa rail (Gallirallus okinawae), and the hellbender (Crytobranchus alleganiensis alleganiensis and C. a. bishopi).

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