You too can wear the Lytle Lab t-shirt!

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(design: Ivan Phillipsen)

Graduate students

New collaborative project starting in 2026: "Measuring and predicting ecological thresholds"
I am recruiting a PhD student to join a new project examining how hydrology leads to different ecosystem states - in particular, how loss of surface flow in streams leads to different aquatic invertebrate and riparian vegetation communities. This is a collaborative project that involves eDNA-based characterization of aquatic insect communities (Lytle lab), riparian ecology (Dave Merritt - Colorado State U.), and hydrology (Skuyler Herzog lab, OSU-Cascades). The project will also use landscape and hydrological modeling to connect climate to ecological shifts, including fire risk in riparian zones. The project is funded by Dept. of Defense, and fieldwork will take place on military bases in Arizona and California.

Other ongoing projects include:

• evolution of aquatic organisms in rivers with intermittent or human-modified flow regimes
• whole-community models for aquatic insect population dynamics
• aquatic insect ecology & evolution in the Grand Canyon and Colorado River tributaries
• detection of parasites, pathogens, and rare or invasive species with eDNA

I also encourage original project ideas from motivated students. Contact me directly at [email protected] with a statement of your research interests and experience, and your curriculum vitae.

Postdoctoral scholars

I will be recruiting a postdoctoral scholar for the "Measuring and predicting ecological thresholds" project, to start in late 2026 or early 2027. Stay tuned!
I also encourage you to bring your ideas to co-develop proposals for NSF, the D.H. Smith Fellowship Program, or other opportunities.