Paul Stapp, Ph.D., Colorado State University, 1996
Assistant Professor of Biology
Email: pstapp@fullerton.edu
Personal Web Site: http://faculty.fullerton.edu/pstapp/
Research Interests:
My research has focused on the behavioral, population and community ecology of terrestrial wildlife, especially small- and medium-sized mammals, with the goal of understanding how variation in habitat and resources affect the distribution and abundance of species. My recent work has addressed how populations and communities in natural and disturbed systems are linked across ecosystem boundaries by the movements of individuals, and how spatial subsidies and pulsed resource affect species interactions and the persistence of populations in heterogeneous landscapes. Increasingly, my research has focused on applied problems, from the consequences of invasive predators and infectious disease to keystone species conservation.
Since coming to CSUF in 2002, my research program has grown in three areas. First, I have expanded my studies on the population and community ecology of grassland mammals in northern Colorado, projects that are related to my continuing involvement as a Co-PI on the NSF Shortgrass Steppe Long-Term Ecological Research project at Colorado State University. Current projects include a NSF-funded study of the ecology of plague in prairie dog colonies; a collaborative project to assess the utility of cattle grazing as a tool for creating wildlife habitat; and analysis and synthesis of >12 years of long-term population studies of mammals across semi-arid grasslands. More locally, and building upon my postdoctoral research on the ecology of insular populations and food webs in the Gulf of California, my students and I have studied the ecology and conservation of native (mice and seabirds) and introduced vertebrates (feral cats, deer) on the California Channel Islands. Finally, my students and I have undertaken projects on the ecology and conservation of desert and coastal sage scrub ecosystems in southern California, including recent research to evaluate the efficacy of wildlife underpasses to maintain connectivity for carnivores and other wildlife in urban landscapes, and to determine the effects of rodents on post-fire vegetation recovery in the Mojave Desert.
Selected Publications:
Stapp, P., D.J. Salkeld, et al. Exposure of small rodents to plague during black-tailed prairie dog epizootics. Journal of Wildlife Diseases, in press.
Anderson, W.B., D.A. Wait, & P. Stapp. Resources from another place and time: Responses to pulses in a spatially subsidized system. Ecology, in press.
Millus, S.A., P. Stapp, & P. Martin. 2007. Experimental control of a native predator may improve breeding success of a threatened seabird in the California Channel Islands. Biological Conservation 138:484-492.
Stapp, P. 2007. Rodent communities in active and inactive colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs in shortgrass steppe. Journal of Mammalogy 88:241-249.
Holmgren, M., P. Stapp, et al. 2006. Extreme climatic events shape arid and semiarid ecosystems. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4:87-95.
Stapp, P., M.F. Antolin and M. Ball. 2004. Patterns of extinction in prairie-dog metapopulations: plague outbreaks follow El Ni–o events. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2:235-240.
Stapp, P., and G.A. Polis. 2003. Influence of pulsed resources and marine subsidies on insular rodent populations. Oikos 102:111-123.
Stapp, P. 2002. Stable isotopes reveal evidence of predation by ship rats on seabirds on the Shiant Islands, Scotland. Journal of Applied Ecology 39:831-840.
Stapp, P., and G.D. Hayward. 2002. Effects of an introduced piscivore on native trout: Insights from a demographic model. Biological Invasions 4:299-316.