Biological Sciences
Science and Engineering 601,
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Phone: 479.575.3251
Fax: 479.575.4010
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Steven J. Beaupre Office: SCEN 740 |
Degrees:
Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1993
Research Interests:
The goal of my research is to understand various mechanisms that influence the distribution and abundance of terrestrial vertebrate ectotherms. Specifically, I have been interested in how environmental variation (temperature and food abundance) interacts with time budgets and physiological processes of ectotherms to affect their allocations to growth and reproduction. Thermal effects impinge on the allocation of energy and resources to the competing functions of maintenance, growth, reproduction, and storage which in turn, produce variation in population level processes. My favored approach to these problems is to use comparative bioenergetics to learn about constraints and trade-offs that operate on the physiological performance of individuals. Lately, my interests have expanded to address proximate and ultimate influences on the evolution of sexual size dimorphism (also a bioenergetic problem) the use of individual-based physiologically structured simulations of growth, reproduction and population dynamics for predicting the responses of populations to environmental change, and implications of bioenergetics for conservation.
Academic Interests:
Interfaces between environmental variation, physiology, life history, and emergent population processes of terrestrial vertebrate ectotherms.
Lab Website:
Recent Publications:
Beaupre, S. J. and L. E. Douglas. 2009. Snake populations as indicators of ecosystem health. Pages 244-261, In S. Mullin and R.A. Seigel, eds. Snakes: Applied Ecology and Conservation.
Gardner-Santana, L. C. and S. J. Beaupre. 2009. Timber Rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) exhibit elevated and less variable body temperatures during pregnancy. Copeia, in press.
Hill, J. G. and S. J. Beaupre. 2008. Body size, growth and reproduction in a population of western cottonmouths (Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma) in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas. Copeia 2008:103-112.
Beaupre, S. J. 2008. Annual variation in time-energy allocation by Timber Rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) in relation to food acquisition. In: Biology of Rattlesnakes. W. K. Hayes, S. P. Bush, D. Caldwell, and K. Beaman (eds.). Loma Linda Press.
Beaupre, S. J. and C. E. Montgomery. 2007. The meaning and consequences of foraging mode in snakes. Chapter 14 in: Foraging Behavior in Lizards. S. M. Reilly, D. Miles, and L. McBrayer (eds.). Cambridge University Press.