William F. Morris, Professor
Bill Morris studies the population ecology of plants and insects (both herbivores and pollinators). Current projects include: the population dynamic consequences of constitutive and inducible resistance in plants, the maintenance of mutualistic interactions between flowering plants and nectar-robbing pollinators, the use of population-level attributes to detect biotic responses to ongoing environmental changes, and the use of mathematical models to assess viability of threatened and endangered populations. The common thread uniting these projects is that they combine field experiments and mathematical models to study population dynamics in natural and managed systems.
Education:
Ph.D., University of Washington, 1990
B.S., Cornell University, 1983
Office Location: 104 Bio Sci Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address: wfmorris@duke.edu
Specialties:
Ecology and Population Biology
Research Categories: Population ecology, mutualism, plant-insect interations, life-history adaptations to stochastic environments, theoretical ecology, conservation ecology
Research Description: Bill Morris studies the population ecology of plants and insects (both herbivores and pollinators). Current projects include: the population dynamic consequences of constitutive and inducible resistance in plants, the maintenance of mutualistic interactions between flowering plants and nectar-robbing pollinators, the use of population-level attributes to detect biotic responses to ongoing environmental changes, and the use of mathematical models to assess viability of threatened and endangered populations. The common thread uniting these projects is that they combine field experiments and mathematical models to study population dynamics in natural and managed systems.
Recent Publications (More Publications) (search)
- Carley, LN; Geber, MA; Morris, WF; Eckhart, VM; Moeller, DA, Local Adaptation Is Highest in Populations With Stable Long-Term Growth., Ecology letters, vol. 28 no. 2 (February, 2025), pp. e70071 [doi] [abs].
- Louthan, AM; Baumgardner, AW; Ehrlén, J; Dahlgren, JP; Loomis, AK; Morris, WF, Climatic versus biotic drivers' effect on fitness varies with range size but not position within range in terrestrial plants, Ecological Monographs, vol. 95 no. 1 (February, 2025) [doi] [abs].
- Carley, LN; Mitchell-Olds, T; Morris, WF, Increasing Aridity May Threaten the Maintenance of a Plant Defence Polymorphism., Ecology letters, vol. 28 no. 1 (January, 2025), pp. e70039 [doi] [abs].
- Kiekebusch, E; Louthan, AM; Morris, WF; Hudgens, BR; Haddad, NM, Vital rate responses to temperature lead to butterfly population declines under future warming scenarios, Journal of Insect Conservation, vol. 28 no. 5 (October, 2024), pp. 1079-1091 [doi] [abs].
- O'Connell, RD; Doak, DF; Horvitz, CC; Pascarella, JB; Morris, WF, Nonlinear life table response experiment analysis: Decomposing nonlinear and nonadditive population growth responses to changes in environmental drivers., Ecology letters, vol. 27 no. 3 (March, 2024), pp. e14417 [doi] [abs].