Overview
Bill Morris studies the population ecology of plants and
insects (both herbivores and pollinators). Current
projects include: the population dynamic consequences
of constitutive and inducible resistance in plants, the
maintenance of mutualistic interactions between
flowering plants and nectar-robbing pollinators, the use
of population-level attributes to detect biotic responses
to ongoing environmental changes, and the use of
mathematical models to assess viability of threatened
and endangered populations. The common thread uniting
these projects is that they combine field experiments
and mathematical models to study population dynamics
in natural and managed systems.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Professor of Biology
·
2006 - Present
Biology,
Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Recent Publications
Incorporating climate-driven disturbance shifts in population models reveals non-additive dynamics
Journal Article Biological Conservation · April 1, 2026 Climate change is anticipated to have direct impacts on future population trends, as increased temperature and changing precipitation patterns shape organisms' survival, growth, and reproduction. Yet climatic shifts also have the potential to influence oth ... Full text CiteWhat Is Demographic Lability and When Might We Expect to See It?
Journal Article The American naturalist · December 2025 AbstractWhen vital rates are convex functions of environmental drivers, temporal variation in those vital rates could increase long-term stochastic fitness (so-called demographic lability). Yet no empirical cases of this phenomenon have yet been documented ... Full text CiteClimatic versus biotic drivers' effect on fitness varies with range size but not position within range in terrestrial plants
Journal Article Ecological Monographs · February 1, 2025 All populations are affected by multiple environmental drivers, including climatic drivers such as temperature or precipitation and biotic drivers such as herbivory or mutualisms. The relative response of a population to each driver is critical to prioriti ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Collaborative LTREB Research: How will local adaptation and climatic extremes shape continental-scale changes in distribution and abundance under climate change?
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2024 - 2029Collaborative Research: Adapting disturbance management to future climate in a fire-prone ecosystem: does response of an at-risk species indicate biodiversity effects?
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2025 - 2027Integrating legacy effects of past disturbance and climate into stochastic population dynamics in a changing world
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Kansas State University · 2024 - 2027View All Grants
Education
University of Washington ·
1990
Ph.D.
Cornell University ·
1983
B.S.