Derek West

Graduate Student

derek.west@yale.edu

I am broadly interested in the food webs of freshwater systems, both lakes and streams.  My attention is currently drawn toward studying food webs at a landscape scale.    Although food webs are often studied in only a single system, they are rarely this simple.  Fluxes to and from both lentic and lotic systems can be very important in the trophic dynamics of these systems.  The study of exchanges between streams and riparian areas, the benthic and pelagic zones of lakes and between marine and freshwater systems has led to valuable insights into the functioning of ecosystems.  As I develop my research for the coming years I plan to investigate linkages such as these to better our understanding of the processes in these important ecosystems.