Earl D McCoy

My students and I study a broad range of ecological and biogeographical problems. Many of our projects relate in some way to conservation biology, either in theory or in practice. Most of our current research deals with conservation and restoration of severely threatened upland habitats, particularly sandhill and scrub, in Florida. Within this framework, my students have focused their projects on a variety of topics: structure of gopher tortoise populations, demography and autecology of sand skinks, restoration of Florida mouse populations on lands mined for phosphate, and comparative biology of common and rare frogs, for example. Other students have focused their projects on topics such as methods of ecological analysis and the composition of species' assemblages. My own research encompasses additional topics in the areas of disturbance ecology, particularly fire ecology; biogeographical theory; and the philosophical basis of ecology.
Virtually all of the research being conducted by my students is aimed at solving particular problems and, therefore, probably would be labeled "applied research" by many persons. My students are encouraged to take a broad view of ecological research, however. They are well-versed in ecological theory and practice, and most develop a useful set of computer, statistics, and modern genetics skills.