Chase Mendenhall

([email protected])
 
I am a doctoral student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Program at Stanford University working with Gretchen C. Daily and Paul R. Ehrlich in the Center for Conservation Biology. My research primarily focuses on quantifying the populations, community assemblages, and species interactions of organisms in human-dominated landscapes under the framework of countryside biogeography. Much of my work centers on predictive models, habitat use, and metapopulation and metacommunity dynamics of birds and bats in Coto Brus, Costa Rica. This work is largely informed by the need to crystallize a firm link between diversity of life on the planet, conservation biology, ecosystem services, and natural capital. Specifically, I am interested in fine-scale tradeoffs between the conservation of biodiversity and agricultural production in the tropics.
 
Additionally, with different disciplinary goals and methods, I am interested in reframing the red in tooth and claw narrative of the natural world by examining cooperation between animal communities, social groups, and genders. In collaboration with Joan E. Roughgarden I am investigating the evolution and ecology of social reproductive behavior under the framework of social selection, an alternative to sexual selection theory and its corollaries. I am interested in relating the evolutionary behavioral ecologies of mutualism, behavior in the face of resource limitations, and social reproductive behavior with the human predicaments of consumption, population policy, and gender inequality.