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

July 2018
Amanda Koltz's work on the interactions between warming and spider predation on soil carbon dynamics is now out in PNAS!

June 2018
Aspen's paper on antibiotics and gut redox status is now out in eLife.

April 2018
We're very excited that David De La Mater will be joining the Wright lab this fall
Justin's work with Jason Fridley on succession across a latitudinal gradient is published in PNAS

March 2018
Cari Ficken has successfully defended her dissertation. She will be heading to University of Waterloo to work with Rebecca Rooney to understand how mining impacts wetland functioning

January 2018
Jennifer Rocca will be joining the Wright lab as a post-doc working on our (her) newly funded NSF grant on Microbial Community Coalescence: Disentangling Assembly Processes during Aquatic Mixing

August 2017
Rachel is leaving the Wright lab to start her new position as an Assistant Professor at Northern Arizona University.  Good luck!

June 2017
Emily has been awarded a NASA NSPIRES fellowship to combine remote sensing with ground based measurements of the effects of salt water intrusion on coastal ecosystems!
Justin presents at the New Phytologist Symposium on Trait covariation: Structural and functional relationships in plant ecology

May 2017
Aspen Reese successfully defended her PhD! She will be heading to a Harvard Junior Fellowship in September where she will be sure to be making important contributions on community assembly in microbes.

February 2017
The Wright lab is hiring an REU this summer to investigate the effects of the invasive grass, Microstegium vimineum on native ecosystems.  Interested?

January 2017
Aspen Reese has been awarded a Harvard Fellows position starting next year. Amazing work!
Marissa's review paper on Invasive effects on N cycling is out in New Phytologist
And Cari has her paper on the effects of fire on N cycling out in Biogeosciences


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!