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Emily Farrer
Ph.D. student
B.A., Honors in Biology, Kalamazoo College, 2002
U-M affiliation
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Contact information
University of Michigan
2086/2082 Kraus Natural Science Building
830 North University
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1048
Phone: (734) 764-1490
Fax: (734) 763-0544
Email: ecfarrer@umich.edu
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Fields of study
Plant community ecology, invasion biology
Research interests
I am interested in the role that plant-environment feedbacks play in the structuring and coexistence of plant communities. Because plants take up space and interact with their local environment through shading, litter production, and resource uptake, plants affect local soil properties; and species differ in their effects on the environment because they have different traits. The effects that plants have on the environment feed back to influence plant performance, and these feedbacks can be positive or negative. The strength and direction of feedbacks and the life history stages at which they occur can have implications for spatial structure and could be a mechanism of coexistence in plant communities. I am interested in investigating these questions theoretically with spatial simulation models and empirically in the jack pine understory community. I am also interested in applying this feedback framework to invasive species, and I am experimentally exploring feedbacks generated by living plants and plant litter of the invasive hybrid cattail in freshwater marshes.
Advisor
Deborah Goldberg
Select publications
Farrer, E.C., and D.E. Goldberg. 2009. Litter drives ecosystem and plant community changes in cattail invasion. Ecological Applications 19:398-412.
News
Most outstanding EEB publication awarded
Emily Farrer won EEB’s Most Outstanding Publication Award for “Litter drives ecosystem and plant community changes in cattail invasion.” The paper was published in the journal Ecological Applications, Volume 19, Issue 2 (March 2009) pp. 398-412.
Every year one graduate student paper is selected based on approach of study, scope of findings, and insights into questions of broad scientific interest using multiple lines of evidence. The prize is $500.
Best ESA student poster
Kudos to Emily Farrer who won the E. Lucy Braun Award for best student poster at the Ecological Society of America meeting this year. Her poster was titled "The balance of positive and negative interactions in driving community dynamics." Farrer will receive the award at a ceremony at the ESA 2009 meeting in Albuquerque, N.M.
Dirty (Green) Jobs
For three LSA students, environmental work is downright filthy.
Their jobs: to overcome mud, stench, monotony, and overall ickiness to accomplish an environmental project while earning college credit and on-the-job research experience. From transplanting cattails, spraying herbicide, and searching for fish eggs, LSA students Emily Farrer, Matt Koski, and Dana Rudy routinely dealt with unpleasant tasks to make the Great Lakes region a little bit greener. Read the rest of the article from Spring 2008 LSAmagazine.
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