• Accepting graduate student applications for fall 2024

    The Damschen Plant Community Ecology Lab in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is accepting applications for 1-2 Ph.D. student positions that will start in fall 2024. Our lab seeks to understand the impact of local and regional processes on plant community composition and diversity within the context of global change…

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  • Join us for Jon Henn’s defense seminar

    Join us for Jon Henn’s defense seminar on Wednesday, April 20, 2020 at 9:00-10:00 am central. Jon will discuss his PhD work on “Linking plant community response to global change through functional traits.” Join via Zoom at: https://zoom.us/j/96325694854?pwd=bHo2NGprWElqM2xkY1B2MzdFdmx3Zz09

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  • Offering grad seminar on trait-based ecology Spring 2020

    Trait-based ecology: Where are we now? Functional traits, or the characteristics of organisms that serve as proxies for their success and fitness, are gaining popularity in ecological studies. Functional traits are being used to explain the basic ecological mechanisms underlying community assembly, how organisms are responding to global change impacts, and predicting the outcome of…

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  • Ellen Damschen receives University Teaching Award

    Lab PI, Ellen Damschen, received the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Inclusive Excellence. She is humbled and grateful to be honored in this way. You can read about the award here: And listen to her thoughts on teaching here:

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  • Papers, fieldwork, and more summer fun

    This summer has been a wonderful chance to work together and celebrate projects coming to fruition. New papers led by Jesse Miller on how different flowering guilds respond to landscape spatial structure and the relationship between plant and consumer richness in the Ozark glades are coming out. Wonderful group of undergraduates in the lab measuring…

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