Research
Murdoch's main research studies focus on understanding what regulates populations in abundance. He is interested in the mechanisms that maintain the stability of interacting consumer and resource populations when the consumer keeps the resource population far below the level set by its resources. His research objective is to develop models of particular systems, do experiments to understand these systems and test these models, as well as to develop more general theory. Two experimental systems are used in Murdoch's research: the Aphytis-California Red Scale and daphnia-algae systems. Murdoch's work in biological control has been instrumental in demonstrating that stability of parasitoid-host interactions in pest control can be achieved by non-equilibrium mechanisms. For example, his examination of the parasitoid-host relationship between Aphytis and the California red scale has elucidated that stability does not arise from metapopulation dynamics and that the regulating mechanism may, instead, lie in size-related interactions, in small-scale spatial heterogeneity, or mixtures of these mechanisms.
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