We are a research lab at Duke University exploring the causes and consequences of patterns of biological diversity across the planet. We combine observational and experimental approaches with modeling to develop and test hypotheses and build towards synthetic ecological theory.  We hope you enjoy exploring our website! 

You can visit us in person at the Biological Sciences building room 256, 130 Science Drive, Durham NC 27708.

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News

August 2016
Good representation at ESA. Justin, Rachel, Greg, and Aspen all give talks and recent undergrad Kyrstin Lulow presents a poster.  Cari presented a poster at the Unifying Ecology Across Scales Gordon Research Conference

June 2016
Justin is a co-author in a paper in Oecologia 
based on work conducted while at the University of Potsdam

May 2016
Big month for the Wright Lab: Marissa successfully defends her PhD and will be starting a post doc with Amy Zanne in August. YAY!!

Cari is awarded an American Society of Naturalist Research Award

and Justin, Greg, and Rachel have a paper published in Phil Trans B

April 2016
Cari is invited to the CLIMMANI-Interface Workshop on Modeling Extreme Climatic Scenarios in Florence, Italy

March 2016
Cari is awarded and NSF DDIG for her research on "Scaling Plant Physiology to Ecosystem Ecology: Assessing the Role of the Plant Community in Preventing Nitrogen Losses Following Fire." She was also awarded the Oak Ridge National Lab GO Fellowship to work with Jeff Warren. Go Cari!

Feb 2016
Cari coauthors a paper on the carbon storage of Prairie Pothole wetlands in JEQ. Click here to read it!

Sept 2015
Busy time in the lab as Justin has returned from a year long sabbatical in Germany working in the lab of Jasmin Joshi

In the meantime, Greg published papers in Forest Ecology and Management and Functional Ecology

Aspen has a paper published in The ISME Journal

And big congratulations to Cari for being awarded the ESA Biogeosciences New Phytologist Best Student Presentation for her talk on species differences in ability to respond to pulses of N at ESA's annual meeting!

Dec 2014
Cari was awarded a Sigma Xi GIAR and a Bass Summer Fellowship!

Aug 2014
A huge "THANK YOU!" to each of our summer technicians (Briana Boaz, Ben Grunswald, Hannah Kinsley, Kyrstin Lulow, Danny Reiland, and Sam Young) for a wonderful field season in The Wright Lab!

June 2014
Justin has been awarded tenure! Congratulations Justin!

Cari and Aspen have both passed their preliminary exams and advance to PhD candidacy!

April 2014
Aspen has been awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and Cari was awarded Honorable Mention.  Great work by both of them!

March 2014
Marissa Lee is awarded a DDIG from the NSF for her work studying the effects of Microstegium on nitrogen cycling!

Amanda Koltz has secured funding for a post-doc at Washington University.  We'll miss you but are excited for your new opportunities.

Justin is a co-author on another Nutnet paper published in Nature

Feb 2014
We are hiring several research technicians for May-August 2014! Check out the job announcement here.
Contact Steve for more information.

Jan 2014
Aspen writes a nice article for
the EEB and Flow website

Jenny's paper is published in Hydrobiologia

Dec 2013
Justin is awarded a grant from NSF to study the effects of an invasive grass on nutrient cycling in complex landscapes. Yay!

Oct 2013
Marissa Lee has her work on AM fungal effects on Microstegium published in Biological Invasions.

July 2013
Cari Ficken publishes her seed bank research in Wetlands Ecology and Management!