Mike Fowler's Homepage

New Address from 01.11.2009
Population Ecology Group Institut Mediterrani d'Estudis Avançats Miquel Marqués, 21 07190 Esporles Mallorca, Spain Tel: +34 971 611 756

IKP's home page

Whatever of my work is judged worthy of publication, I do not want my name to appear there. (Pierre de Fermat, 1637)
I don't care to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member. (Groucho Marx, 1959)

About Me:

I have been carrying out research in the Integrative Ecology Unit in Helsinki with Profs. Esa Ranta & Veijo Kaitala since November 2002. I am particularly interested in the best ways to address species- and spatial interactions in theoretical ecology. Questions currently arising from this include asking how population dynamics are affected by: density dependent dispersal and the Allee effect; interactions between maternal effects and dispersal; community interactions and invasions in space; and rewiring small world networks. I am also interested in looking at the effects of long- and short-term environmental change on population dynamics - how the colour and strength of environmental variation can affect population dynamics and extinction processes.

Shifting synchrony in a Canada lynx time series. Different lynx populations in North America may change in their relative synchrony with each other, as a result of asymmetric dispersal between populations. Two patches that are initially out of phase with each other gradually drift into perfect phase, before shifting again out of phase.	Coloured Environmental Variation. Fluctuations in environmental variables may have some temporal structure in them, so that changes are relatively fast (blue), slow (red) or truly random (white).

Previously, I carried out my undergraduate and PhD research at the University of Glasgow, with Prof. Graeme Ruxton & Dr. Jan Lindström. My PhD. thesis is titled 'Interactions between density dependence and dispersal', and I used computer simulations to look at a variety of subjects within theoretical ecology. In particular, I was interested in studying the Allee effect, competition within communities and lynx population dyanmics, all within a spatial context. As well as the modelling, I carried out some experimental work assessing wing production and density dependence in the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum.

• I have been supervising Lasse Ruokolainen MSc. since November 2005 for his PhD. thesis, which is concerned with developing models of community persistence in variable environments, using Niche theory.
  
• Introduction to Ecological modelling course. Links to a page containing presentations & lectures given in this course.
  I will be co-ordinating this course in autumn 2008, please feel free to e-mail me if you are interested in finding our more details or have any queries.

You can check out my publications and papers that cite them on ISI here, or read my blog on the Nature Network.

Check out our review of the importance of temporally correlated environmental variation on ecological and evolutionary dynamics, now published in TREE.

• Fowler, M.S. (2009) Extinction cascades and the distribution of species interactions. Oikos. (accepted).
  
• Ruokolainen, L., Ranta, E., Kaitala, V. & Fowler, M.S. (2009) Community stability under different correlation structures of species' environmental responses. Journal of Theoretical Biology. 261: 379-387.
  
• Ruokolainen, L., Lindén, A., Kaitala, V. & Fowler, M.S. (2009) Ecological and evolutionary dynamics under coloured environmental variation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 24: 555-563.
  
• Ruokolainen, L., Ranta, E., Kaitala, V. & Fowler, M.S. (2009) When can we distinguish between neutral and non-neutral processes in community dynamics under ecological drift? Ecology Letters 12: 909-919.
  
• Fowler, M.S. (2009) Increasing community size and connectance can increase stability in competitive communities. Journal of Theoretical Biology 258: 179-188. Or view author preprint
  
• Fowler, M.S. (2009) Density dependent dispersal decisions and the Allee effect. Oikos 118: 604-614 and Supporting Material, or download a locked pdf version.
  
• Ruokolainen, L. & Fowler, M.S. (2008) Community extinction patterns in coloured environments. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London - Series B 275: 1775-1783
  
• Ranta, E., Fowler, M.S. & Kaitala, V. (2008) Population synchrony in small-world networks. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London - Series B 275: 435-442
  
• Ranta, E., Kaitala, V., Fowler, M.S., Laakso, J., Ruokolainen, L. & O'Hara, R.B. (2008) Detecting compensatory dynamics in competitive communities under environmental forcing. Oikos 117: 1907-1911
  
• Ranta, E., Kaitala, V., Fowler, M.S., Laakso, J., Ruokolainen, L. & O'Hara, R.B. (2008) The structure and strength of environmental variation modulate covariance patterns. A reply to Houlahan et al. Oikos 117: 1914
  
• Ruokolainen, L., Fowler, M.S. & Ranta, E. (2007) Extinctions in competitive communities forced by coloured environmental variation. Oikos 116: 439-448
  
• Ranta, E., Kaitala, V., Fowler, M.S. and Lindström, J. (2007). Environment forcing populations. A contributed chapter to: The Impact of Environmental Variability on Ecological Systems (eds. David A. Vasseur and Kevin S. McCann), Springer Verlag.
  
• Enberg, K., Fowler, M.S. & Ranta, E. (2006) The impacts of different management strategies and environmental forcing in ecological communities. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London - Series B 273: 2491-2499
  
• Fowler, M.S. & Ruokolainen, L. (2006) Simple laboratory tests of ecological theories: what we can learn, and when we should be cautious. Journal of Biosciences 31: 177-179
  
• O'Hara, B., Fowler, M.S. & Johnson, C.A. (2006) Why negatives should be viewed as positives. Nature 439: 782
  
• Fowler, M.S. (2005) Predicting community persistence based on different methods of species ranking. Annales Zoologici Fennici 42 : 533-543
  
• Fowler, M.S. (2005) Interactions between maternal effects and dispersal. Oikos 110: 81-90
  
• Kotze, D.J., Johnson, C.A., O'Hara, R.B., Vepsäläinen K. & Fowler, M.S. (2004) Editorial: The Journal of Negative Results in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology The Journal of Negative Results - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 1: 1-5
  
• Fowler, M.S. & Ruxton, G.D. (2002) Population dynamic consequences of Allee effects. Journal of theoretical biology 215: 39-46
  
• Fowler, M.S. & Lindström, J. (2002) Extinctions in simple and complex communities Oikos 99: 511-517
  
• Fowler, M.S. (2002). Interactions between density dependence and dispersal. PhD. Thesis, University of Glasgow.
  

Links:

• Try out the Theoretical Population Dynamics discussion forum, over at Nature Network,. What is a population? Can we come up with a consensus about the best way to deal with population dynamics?
  
• The Nordic Centre of Excellence. I am funded by the Ecoclim project - a collaborative research programme between theoretical ecologists in the Universities of Helsinki, Lund and Oslo.
  
• The Journal of Negative Results, E&EB. An innovative new journal which acts as an important forum for publishing negative or non-significant results which are likely to have important consequences in the fields of ecology & evolutionary biology. I am an associate editor for this journal, so please consider submitting here!
  FIRST EDITION NOW ONLINE! CHECK IT OUT HERE!
  
• My personal page A lighthearted look at my time in the Finnish gulags. Pictures, poetry, pie and beans.
  

Feel free to e-mail me [replace (at_sign) with @]: mfowler(at_sign)imedea.uib-csic.es