Carla E. Caceres

Assistant Professor

Department of Animal Biology &
Program in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 244-2139

Research Interests
I am a limnologist with interests in population, community and evolutionary ecology.  I have been working in the lakes and ponds surrounding KBS since 1997 and I currently have two projects at KBS.  The first, "Physical limnology for the parasite ecologist", addresses the causes of epidemics of the common microparasitic fungus Metschnikowia bicuspidata in populations of its host, Daphnia dentifera.  The project is in collaboration with scientists from Michigan State University, University of Illinois, University of California, Santa Barbara and the National Science Foundation.  The second project, "Causes and Consequences of Recombination", is headed by Mike Lynch at Indiana University and involves graduate students, post-docs and faculty from several universities.  This project is using Daphnia as a model system to investigate the long standing question in evolutionary biology: "Why sex and recombination?".  Additional information regarding these and other projects can be found at my website http://www.life.uiuc.edu/caceres/.