Name

Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Mailing address: 1041 E. Lowell St., Tucson, AZ 85721
Telephone: (520) 626- 2772
Fax: (520) 626-3522
Email: vcorby@email.arizona.edu

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Research Interests

One of the most well studied factors regulating species diversity is energy, typically measured as temperature or productivity. Relationships between energy and diversity have been documented for a wide variety of taxa across a wide range of scales. Variation in the form of the relationship has generated much debate over the mechanisms by which energy influences diversity.

Another factor that has a large influence on species diversity but that has received relatively little attention is human activity. Humans have drastically altered the surface of the planet, and annually appropriate a over one-third of terrestrial net primary productivity. Understanding the effects of human activities on species diversity is essential to effective management of biodiversity, but these broad-scale changes also provide “pseudo-experimental” opportunities to examine the factors that regulate species diversity at scales larger than previously possible.

I am interested in documenting broad-scale patterns of insect diversity and using these data to investigate energy-diversity relationships and the effects of human activities on indigenous patterns of biodiversity. Although insects comprise the large majority of species diversity on the planet and are numerically dominant and ecologically important within most terrestrial ecosystems, relatively little is known of patterns of insect diversity, especially at regional to global scales. The primary obstacle to the study of broad-scale patterns in insect diversity is the lack of suitable data.

Currently I am investigating the responses of ant assemblages to land use change and energy availability across a regional productivity gradient on the Pacific slope of northern Mexico. Over the past five decades a tremendous amount of native Desertscrub, Thornscrub, and Tropical Deciduous Forest habitat in this region of Mexico has been converted to exotic buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare) pasture. I am addressing questions concerning how humans are altering species abundance distributions and energy-diversity relationships by comparing patterns of ant abundance and diversity in native and exotic habitats across this gradient.

I am also working with a large collection of insects created by combining undergraduate education with a systematic survey of insect diversity within the Sonoran Desert in northern Mexico. Full collection information, including detailed information on sampling effort, is attached to every specimen in the collection, facilitating the use of the data in biodiversity research. I hope to continue to find ways to combine science and outreach in order to fill a critical need for insect data in the field of biodiversity.