Research in the Benstead Lab

We're conducting research at a number of local and international sites, taking advantage of their fascinating and unique characteristics to ask broad questions about fundamental ecological processes.

Interactions between Temperature and Nutrient Supply
​(Hengill, western Iceland)

Since 2010 we have been working at Hengill in western Iceland, a site that represents an ideal 'outdoor laboratory' for research on questions related to metabolic theory and climate change. The catchment is drained by a large number of streams that differ in water temperature because of local, indirect geothermal heating, while being similar in water chemistry and other potentially confounding variables. We have been able to exploit these differences by studying both the natural landscape gradient of temperature-acclimated streams, and by using heat exchangers placed in warm springs to warm up a whole stream as well as arrays of experimental streamside channels. This multi-scale design has been a powerful approach for teasing out the short- versus long-term effects of temperature at different levels of ecological organization. 

Check out the Publications page for papers from this project, as well as our project blog, the Hengill Diaries.

Structure and Function of Cave Stream Food Webs
(Alabama, Tennessee)

Caves are fascinating ecosystems. First, they contain depauperate communities made up of a mix of specialized and opportunistic taxa that form relatively simple food webs. Second, they are relatively stable environments, particularly with respect to temperature. Last, they lie at the extreme end of the heterotrophy gradient and are commonly energy-limited because of low supply rates of detrital carbon.

For all these reasons, cave streams are ideal systems in which to ask fundamental research questions, especially those that deal with bottom-up (energy) limitation of food webs. At UA we are ideally placed to work in these systems: there are more than 4000 caves in Alabama alone.

I'm always pleased to hear from prospective students with an interest in working on cave ecology (they're a certain breed). So if you enjoy spending time in dark, wet places, please get in touch.

Ecology of Hyperdiverse Temperate Floodplain Ecosystems
​(Alabama)

What is the natural ecological structure and function of mid-order rivers in the southeastern USA? This question is difficult to answer because hydrologically unaltered river systems are now rare. Their size and complexity also represent considerable challenges to conducting research.

The Sipsey River is one of the last unregulated mid-order rivers in the southeast and is situated just twenty minutes from the UA campus. The river's natural hydrological regime allows seasonal flooding of extensive floodplain forest every winter. For a temperate river, the Sipsey also supports staggering levels of biodiversity, including at least 80 fish species at the site pictured here. Physical and hydrological complexity combine with high species richness to make the Sipsey River a compelling model landscape in which to conduct research on the role of biocomplexity in ecosystem structure and function.

We have now obtained LIDAR data for our study site in the Forever Wild tract of the Sipsey near campus, which will allow us to construct a high-resolution digital elevation model of the floodplain habitat, paving the way for sophisticated spatial analyses of community structure and ecosystem function. I am looking for students and collaborators in this effort, so please get in touch if you'd like to help.