Fey Lab at Reed College
Population and community ecology in variable environments
The Fey Lab focuses on how environmental variation influences the composition, structure, and functioning of biological communities. Our research is centered in population and community ecology, with extensions into physiological, behavioral, and ecosystem ecology. Most research takes place in aquatic ecosystems with lake and pond pelagic food webs. We incorporate field observations, short-term lab experiments, and mathematical models to address research questions.
Lab News
2024
February: Simon Tye's article on the ecological aftermath of predator die-offs gets the cover of Nature
2023
Septemeber: The lab welcomes new post-bacc researcher Hannah Kuder and Danny Gibson.
August: Sam, Hannah M, and Kit Gurin present research at the 2023 ESA annual meeting, right in Portland.
June: The lab welcomes a big summer research crew including Emma Campbell, Gusatvus Compton, Sydney Stitt, Stockten Blanco, and Maud Neeley
April: Hannah is nominated for the Brittish Ecological Society (BES) Haldane Prize, and discussees this on a BES Podcast.
January: Hannah's article on the ability of transgenerational plasticity to influence movement behaviour gets the cover of the Functional Ecology and is a featured as a "behind the paper" contribution, in both English and German.
2022
December: Sam received notice that his NSF CAREER award has been funded.
September: Isaac departs to start graduate school at the Oregon State University within the Department of Integrative Biology. Best of luck!
August: Isaac, Hannah, and Sam present research at the in-person ESA 2022 in Montreal.
August: Sam receives tenure at Reed.
May: The lab welcomes summer research fellows Danny Gibson ('23) and Emma Campbell ('25) as they kick off research.
2021
October: The lab welcomes new post-baccalaureate researchers, Isaac Schuman and Hannah Meier.
September: Mahalia Dryak (Reed '20) was interviewed about her thesis experience on the Burn Your Draft Podcast
August: Dispersal event! Tamara, Maggie, and Meredith leave Reed to start graduate programs in Ecology. Best of luck!
August: Meredith and Hannah Meier (Reed '21) present phytoplankton themed research at the 2021 Ecological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting.
May: Tamara publishes her research on the role of thermal acclimation for cyanobacterial growth and toxin production with Delaney Pietsch (Reed '21) and Maeve Kolk (Reed '19) in L&O Letters.
March: Sam gives a virtual seminar and meets members of the Duke Biology Department.
2020
October: Sam and Maggie begin participating a Canadian Institute for Ecology and Evolution (CIEE) working group on ecological consequences of thermal variability.
September: Sam, Meredith, and Aaron Ramirez share thoughts on how to conduct remote independent ecology projects.
August: Tamara Layden, Meredith Theus (Reed '21), and Maggie Slein (Reed '21) present research at the virtual ESA meeting originally scheduled for Salt Lake City.
2019
July: Aaron Till's (Reed '18) senior thesis is published in Nature Climate Change, and is widely covered.
May: Sam gives the keynote address for the Environmental Science and Management (ESM) Research Colloquium for researchers at Portland State University, University of Oregon, and Oregon State University.
April: We received good news that NSF has funded our Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) proposal titled "Uncovering the population and community level consequences fo phenotypic plasticity" with David Vasseur and Colin Kremer.
2018
January: Our new paper on the importance of gradual plasticity for population dynamics is now available at PRSB.
January: Sam quoted regarding the connection between climate warming and mass mortality events in The Washington Post.
January: I presented in-progress research on the potential for 'behavioral rescue' to ameliorate the impacts of climate warming at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual meeting.
2017
August: I've moved to Portland in time to present at the ESA annual meeting, and am officially starting a faculty position at Reed College.
May: I've visited NCEAS to participate in the first meeting of a new working group: Synthesizing population and community synchrony to understand drivers of ecological stability across LTER sites.
January: Sam heads to his first SICB Meeting to participate in a symposium on the indirect effects of global change.
2016
August: I'm going to be a visitor in Tony Ives's lab in Madison, Wisconsin for much of the 2016-2017 year. Please come visit if you are nearby.
June: Ever wondered how environmental variation can impact organisms? how to understand if it is changing?, or how to manipulate existing time series question to ask "what if" questions? If so, you might enjoy this paper I helped complete.
May: I've accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Reed College! I am officially starting in August 2017.
February: Sam and David's paper how thermal variability and species interactions alter the response of populations to climate warming is accepted in Ecology.
January: Sam quoted in the New York Times regarding the ongoing common murre die off in Alaska Link
