Ashkaan Fahimipour
Education
- Ph.D., University of California Riverside, 2015
Research Interests
- Community ecology
- Networks
- Data science
- Mathematical modeling of ecosystems
Research Description
I am a community ecologist who combines tools from data science and physics to understand and model complex ecosystems of interacting organisms, and how they respond to perturbations. My research is interdisciplinary and I work in a range of habitats – from freshwater ponds, coastal marine communities, and coral reefs to urban ecosystems – and with taxa as diverse as fish, bacteria, and arthropods. My work shifts strategically between math modeling to advance theories for ecological networks; the development and application of data science tools to make sense of big ecological data; and experiments that probe expectations from theory, typically in conjunction with technologies like computer vision. I am primarily interested in uncovering the organizational principles linking ecosystems across scales: from individuals’ traits, to the behaviors of groups, dynamics of interactions, the structure of ecological networks, and the emergence of macroscopic spatial patterns.
Recent Publications
- Fahimipour, A. K., Zeng, F., Homer, M., Traulsen, A., Levin, S. A., & Gross, T. (2022). Sharp thresholds limit the benefit of defector avoidance in cooperation on networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(33), e2120120119.
- Fahimipour, A. K., & Gross, T. (2020). Mapping the bacterial metabolic niche space. Nature Communications, 11(1), 1-8.
- Fahimipour, A. K., Levin, D. A., & Anderson, K. E. (2019). Omnivory does not preclude strong trophic cascades. Ecosphere, 10(7), e02800.
- Fahimipour, A. K., & Anderson, K. E. (2015). Colonisation rate and adaptive foraging control the emergence of trophic cascades. Ecology Letters, 18(8), 826-833.