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Margaret Metz

Assistant Professor of Biology

  • Margaret Metz
    Margaret Metz
    Copyright, Steve Hambuchen

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How do over a thousand species of trees coexist in an area the size of ~100 football fields? What happens to fire-prone forests when a non-native pathogen is introduced and kills high numbers of just a few species? I am a plant community ecologist, and those are two examples of questions I investigate in my research on forest diversity. I explore the relative importance of biotic interactions, disturbance, and the abiotic environment in driving dynamics. I have ongoing research programs in both the coastal forests of the western US, where a recently introduced pathogen is transforming forest diversity, and in the tropical rainforests of eastern Ecuador, where I have a long-term project on the role of natural regeneration in the maintenance of the hyperdiversity in Amazonian forests.

Teaching

BIO 141 – Investigations in Ecology and Environmental Science

BIO 223 – Plant Biology

BIO 490 – Disease Ecology

Academic Credentials

Postdoctoral Training, University of California, Davis. Plant Pathology.

Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2007. Integrative Biology

A.B. Princeton University, 1998.  Ecology & Evolutionary Biology