William F. Morris

About

William F. Morris studies the population ecology of plants and insects, including herbivores and pollinators. His current projects focus on the population dynamic consequences of constitutive and inducible resistance in plants, the maintenance of mutualistic interactions between flowering plants and nectar-robbing pollinators, and the use of population-level attributes to detect biotic responses to ongoing environmental changes. Additionally, he employs mathematical models to assess the viability of threatened and endangered populations. His research combines field experiments and mathematical modeling to study population dynamics in natural and managed systems. Since 2006, he has been a Professor of Biology at Duke University, affiliated with the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. His work also involves understanding how climate-driven disturbances influence population models, the concept of demographic lability in relation to environmental variability, and the effects of climatic versus biotic drivers on plant fitness across ranges. His research is supported by multiple grants, including those from the National Science Foundation, and aims to address critical questions about how environmental changes impact biological populations.

Research topics

• Demography
• Geography
• Computer Science
• Biology
• Ecology
• Statistics
• Environmental science
• Econometrics
• Mathematics
• Algorithm

Selected publications

• A critical comparison of integral projection and matrix projection models for demographic analysis

  Ecological Monographs · 2021 · 72 citations

  Abstract Structured demographic models are among the most common and useful tools in population biology. However, the introduction of integral projection models (IPMs) has caused a profound shift in the way many demographic models are conceptualized. Some researchers have argued that IPMs, by explicitly representing demographic processes as continuous functions of state variables such as size, are more statistically efficient, biologically realistic, and accurate than classic matrix projection m…

  DOI

• Climate manipulations differentially affect plant population dynamics within versus beyond northern range limits

  Journal of Ecology · 2020 · 27 citations

  Abstract Predicting species' range shifts under future climate is a central goal of conservation ecology. Studying populations within and beyond multiple species' current ranges can help identify whether demographic responses to climate change exhibit directionality, indicative of range shifts, and whether responses are uniform across a suite of species. We quantified the demographic responses of six native perennial prairie species planted within and, for two species, beyond their northern rang…

  DOI

• Latitudinal gradients in population growth do not reflect demographic responses to climate

  Ecological Applications · 2020 · 23 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Spatial gradients in population growth, such as across latitudinal or elevational gradients, are often assumed to primarily be driven by variation in climate, and are frequently used to infer species' responses to climate change. Here, we use a novel demographic, mixed-model approach to dissect the contributions of climate variables vs. other latitudinal or local site effects on spatiotemporal variation in population performance in three perennial bunchgrasses. For all three species, we find tha…

  DOI

• Are genetic variation and demographic performance linked?

  Evolutionary Applications · 2022-10-04 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Quantifying relationships between genetic variation and population viability is important from both basic biological and applied conservation perspectives, yet few populations have been monitored with both long‐term demographic and population genetics approaches. To empirically test whether and how genetic variation and population dynamics are related, we present one such paired approach. First, we use eight years of historical demographic data from five populations of Boechera fecunda…

  PublisherDOI

• Restoration success varies based on time since restoration in a disturbance‐dependent ephemeral wetland ecosystem

  Restoration Ecology · 2023-02-08 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Habitat restoration frequently focuses on reaching an idealized steady state, but this is unrealistic for disturbance‐dependent ecosystems where temporal variability is inherent and habitat conditions are expected to fluctuate. Understanding the ways in which the outcomes of restoration change over time in disturbance‐dependent ecosystems can better inform adaptive management plans and increase the likelihood that restoration efforts will be effective. We conducted a decade‐long restoration expe…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• COLLABORATIVE LTREB RESEARCH: Population- and community-level mechanisms of range limitation in a variable and changing environment

  NSF · $233k · 2007–2013

• LTREB RENEWAL: Collaborative Research: Population- and community-level mechanisms of range limitation in a variable and changing environment

  NSF · $212k · 2012–2019

• Collaborative LTREB Research: How will local adaptation and environmental extremes shape continental-scale changes in species distribution and abundance?

  NSF · $233k · 2018–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel F. Doak

  University of Colorado System

  49 shared

• Allison M. Louthan

  Kansas State University

  24 shared

• Diego P. Vázquez

  Centro Científico Tecnológico - Mendoza

  22 shared

• Jeanne Altmann

  16 shared

• Brian R. Hudgens

  15 shared

• Nick M. Haddad

  Michigan State University

  15 shared

• Susan C. Alberts

  Duke University

  15 shared

• Marı́a B. Garcı́a

  15 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Zoology

  University of Washington

Similar researchers at Duke University

• Xinnian Dongh-103
• Rytas J. Vilgalysh-93