Mike McCoy is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at East Carolina University (USA). His research engages both conceptual and empirical approaches to address questions in conservation, population, and community ecology. His research program spans a broad range of organisms (from mollusks to amphibians) and ecological systems (marine, freshwater and terrestrial). In general, in his research, he takes a mechanistic approach aimed at understanding how variation in individual traits (e.g. size, behavior) scale up to influence population and community level processes. For more information about research in Dr. McCoy’s lab visit his lab webpage.
Dr. McCoy will be a fellow at the C·I·B in October and November 2015. During this time he plans to collaborate with Dr. John Measey, Dr. Tammy Robinson and other C·I·B researchers to explore the application of consumer functional response models for assessing the impacts of invasive species. Over the past few years Dr. McCoy has been developing response surface methodology for estimating functional responses that incorporate size specific differences in predation risk among individual prey. He is also working to develop an approach for scaling up and predicting the impacts of introduced species on communities. While at the C·I·B Dr. McCoy is co-organizing a workshop focused on applications of Functional responses in invasion biology (link), and plans to present one of the keynote talks for the workshop as well as seminar on his research at the University of Stellenbosch.
