Alan Hastings

About

Alan Hastings is a faculty member associated with the Hastings Lab at UC Davis. His research focuses on ecological and evolutionary dynamics, as indicated by the lab's emphasis on current research and the lab members' scholarly activities. The webpage references his CV and highlights his role within the lab, which includes mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. His contributions are recognized within the academic community, and he maintains an active presence in research, as evidenced by recent publications by lab members. Further details about his background, specific research interests, and key contributions are available through the lab's website and his CV.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Ecology
• Biology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Medical education
• Physics
• Demography
• Environmental science

Selected publications

• Seasonality in ecology: Progress and prospects in theory

  Ecological Complexity · 2020 · 138 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Management implications of long transients in ecological systems

  Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2021 · 82 citations

  DOI

• Landscape fragmentation overturns classical metapopulation thinking

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-05-06 · 22 citations

  articleOpen access

  Habitat loss and isolation caused by landscape fragmentation represent a growing threat to global biodiversity. Existing theory suggests that the process will lead to a decline in metapopulation viability. However, since most metapopulation models are restricted to simple networks of discrete habitat patches, the effects of real landscape fragmentation, particularly in stochastic environments, are not well understood. To close this major gap in ecological theory, we developed a spatially explici…

  PublisherDOI

• When can higher‐order interactions produce stable coexistence?

  Ecology Letters · 2024-06-01 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  Most ecological models are based on the assumption that species interact in pairs. Diverse communities, however, can have higher-order interactions, in which two or more species jointly impact the growth of a third species. A pitfall of the common pairwise approach is that it misses the higher-order interactions potentially responsible for maintaining natural diversity. Here, we explore the stability properties of systems where higher-order interactions guarantee that a specified set of abundanc…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Challenges and opportunities to build quantitative self-confidence in biologists

  BioScience · 2023 · 7 citations

  Abstract New graduate students in biology programs may lack the quantitative skills necessary for their research and professional careers. The acquisition of these skills may be impeded by teaching and mentoring experiences that decrease rather than increase students’ beliefs in their ability to learn and apply quantitative approaches. In this opinion piece, we argue that revising instructional experiences to ensure that both student confidence and quantitative skills are enhanced may improve bo…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• QEIB: Stochastic Spatial Spread: Models and Experiments

  NSF · $292k · 2005–2009

• Collaborative:MSPA-CSE: Analysis and Detection of Transient Dynamics in Ecological Systems

  NSF · $186k · 2004–2008

• Metacommunity Dynamics: Integrating Local Dynamics, Stochasticity, and Connectivity

  NSF · $291k · 2018–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Louis W. Botsford

  University of California, Davis

  50 shared

• Jonathan Machta

  Santa Fe Institute

  40 shared

• Karen C. Abbott

  Case Western Reserve University

  36 shared

• Kim Cuddington

  University of Waterloo

  32 shared

• Andrew Morozov

  Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution

  29 shared

• J. Wilson White

  Oregon State University

  28 shared

• Sergei Petrovskii

  Peoples' Friendship University of Russia

  28 shared

• Easton R. White

  University of New Hampshire

  24 shared

Labs

• Hastings LabPI

Similar researchers at University of California, Davis

• Xin Liuh-101
• James Crutchfieldh-63
• N. Sukumarh-48