King Yeung Lam
Ohio State University, OH·Mathematics & Statistics
When roads, farms and cities break natural habitat into small separated patches, some species decline while others hold on or even thrive. Habitat fragmentation ranks among the top five direct drivers of global biodiversity loss, yet its effects remain contested, partly because fragmentation is defined and measured in inconsistent ways.
- Fields
Mathematics & Statistics
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
habitat fragmentation
biodiversity loss
conservation planning
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Develop a trait-based partial differential equation (PDE) model of populations in local patchy landscapes that incorporates edge effects and trade-offs between dispersal and reproductive strategies at patch boundaries.
- Build a metapopulation ordinary differential equation (ODE) model with a new fitness variation index to test how patch configuration affects species, using connectivity parameterizations from the PDE model and empirical data.
- Calibrate and validate model parameters and predictions using controlled Caenorhabditis elegans laboratory experiments and long-term field datasets of freshwater macroinvertebrate communities.
- Apply the linked PDE and metapopulation frameworks to evaluate habitat restoration, corridor design, reserve configuration and species reintroduction strategies under alternative fragmentation scenarios.
More about the research
This project asks whether a species' own traits — how far it disperses and how it reproduces — can predict its response to a fragmented landscape. It combines mathematical modeling with controlled laboratory experiments and long-term field data, then applies the results to conservation planning.
Why it matters
Conservation planners need to know which species suffer most when habitat is divided and which landscape designs help. This work could provide trait-based, quantitative guidance for placing wildlife corridors, restoring degraded ecosystems, configuring reserves and planning reintroductions, with open-source software making the models usable by conservation practitioners.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jerome Goddard
Auburn University at Montgomery, AL·Mathematics & Statistics
Test whether predators change density-dependent emigration, Allee effects and prey stability, using experiments with two Tribolium flour beetle species and a shared natural enemy.
Albert Ruhi
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Identify what controls metacommunity stability in streams, focusing on drought-driven dispersal limits and population synchrony, using long-term monitoring and field experiments in an intermittent river network in Pinnacles National Park.
Katherine Meyer
Carleton College, MN·Mathematics & Statistics
Generalize the "intensity" measure of resilience from attractors to repellers and then to Morse sets, working with Conley theory experts to quantify how vulnerable different dynamic structures are to disturbance.
The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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