contact

Eleanor Jane Blitzer

ejblitzer@berkeley.edu

University of California, Berkeley

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management                  

Division of Insect Biology

VLSB 5057

(510) 642-3989

research

The subject of my dissertation is insect community ecology, specifically, quantifying the relative importance of direct and indirect (apparent) competition in structuring a tri-tropic community.   

My research focuses on identifying natural enemy assemblages and the factors that drive their relative impact as well as understanding the role of multiple host plants and species on both direct and indirect effects.  My dissertation research includes a multi-year, multi-site observational population census of a community of leaf-mining flies, their host plants, and their parasitoids.  From the patterns observed— temporal asynchrony between emergence times of the two fly species—I designed a large-scale manipulative field study to test the hypothesis that apparent competition is a structuring mechanism in this system.  I also ran a laboratory experiment to test for direct resource competition between the herbivores.  I use current, appropriate statistical modeling methods along with quantitative food webs and parasitoid quantitative overlap graph analysis to test for direct and indirect competition.  

publications

Blitzer EJ, Dormann CF, Holzschuh A, Klein AM, Rand TA, and Tscharntke T. (2010) Functionally important spillover of organisms across the managed system-natural habitat interface—a review. (submitted)

Blitzer EJ; Vyazunova I; Lan Q. (2005) "Functional analysis of AeSCP-2 using gene expression knockdown in the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti."  Insect Molecular Biology 14 (3) : 301-307

CV

links I like

Fort Myers Duck Cam