Population dynamics in a changing world: The consequences of environmental variation for species with complex life histories

Population dynamics in a changing world: the consequences of environmental variation for species with complex life histories Despite increasing awareness of the importance of environmental variation in ecological systems, there are still many open questions about how variation affects population dynamics. I studied several aspects of environmental variation and the roles it plays in population dynamics, particularly for species with complex life histories: (1) How do the the effects of native insect herbivores on the population dynamics of an invasive thistle vary across space? (2) In a whitebark pine metapopulation, when multiple populations are connected by dispersal, what is the importance of within-patch heterogeneity for metapopulation persistence?  (3) How will the altitudinal distributions of whitebark pine shift due to climate change?