Ken Leonard's Home Page at UGA
http://kleonard.myweb.uga.edu
mailto: kleonard [at] uga
[dot] edu
First Things
Those who reject science on grounds of faith and those who reject faith on grounds of science are equally benighted.
Quick Bits
The race goes not always to the swiftest nor the battle to the strongest but that's the way the smart money bets.
Scientific knowledge is never final nor certain but it, too, is the way the smart money bets.
Introduction
|
I am a graduate student in the Bradford Research Laboratory, Eugene P. Odum School of Ecology,
University of Georgia where I am in the process of re-educating myself for a new career after thirty-odd years as an information systems and Internet engineer. I received a B.S. Geology, from
UGA in August '05 and intend to work straight through to a Ph.D. Ecology (in May '09?) with additional study in Evolution, Genetics, and Geology. My general research interests are evolutionary-ecological and I am particularly interested in evolutionary punctuations resulting from ecological perturbations. My Ph.D. research program is to look at the evolution of soil microorganisms in response to stresses of global climate change and the resulting effects on nutrient cycling.
I may also be interested in developing a quantitative model, a toolkit and portable implementation, of resource competition and invasion-succession-displacement (i.e. Resource Ratio theory) based on organismal stoichiometry.
|
A
beaver pond at my home.
Ecology is lurking in there, somewhere!
|
|
One of my
ATR-DasGip-Infors chemostats.
I'm doing ecology in vitro.
(in machina veritas?)
|
|
Self doing some
paleontolgy-paleoecology collecting at Tibbs Bridge on the
Conasauga River near Dalton, Ga.
Етот быть похожим на трылобит!
Сеичас не обедныи перерыв?
|
In the future, I would like to take a closer look at relationships between both present and past ecological perturbation and evolutionary punctuation.
I am interested in current events linking (mostly climatic) large scale abiotic environmental changes to (mostly eukaryotic micro-) organismal evolution and in distinguishing between evolution and "adaptation".
I am interested in past events from the Neoproterozoic thru the latest Cambrian. Geologically speaking, this runs from consolidated Rodinia through the snowball-slushball episodes to the isolation of Laurentia, Baltica, and Siberia. Biologically speaking, this runs from the appearance of the first metazoans thru the evolution and sorting of the stem clades of our present phyla.
I am also interested in the stem phylogeny and early evolution of diploblasts, especially Cnidaria. As time permits I am continuing some field and laboratory work investigating what may be an evolutionary intermediate between askeletal (sea anemone-like) and calcareous-skeletal (coral-like) cnidaria.
|
Main and Other Things
'Tween Thought
Beware of one who claims
to know everything.
In truth, such a one knows little if anything.
And worse, such a one would have you know nothing.
Cool Picture
My assistant doing some detritus sampling.
Referrals
Evolution by Any Other Name: Antibiotic Resistance and Avoidance of the
E-Word
Thought
The problem I have with political pathetical correctness is that it's purpose
is not much more than promotion of the sociopolitical ascendancy of those who engage in it. I find too many of its forms to be inaccurate, disrespectful of the persons purportedly affirmed, and insulting to the intelligence and decent intentions of nearly everyone.
'Nother Thought
The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! An ecosystem maintains a resilient stability that,
nevertheless, can be broken. An ecosystem has many nodes and complex flows. If something dams or diverts a flow, if a node is damaged, the stability may
be broken. The untrained miss the warnings of such a break until too late. The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
— after Frank Herbert, Dune (1965), "Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune" (Kynes)
The content and opinions expressed on this web page do not necessarily reflect the views of and are not endorsed by the University of Georgia or the University System of Georgia.