Shawn Wilder, Associate Professor

Nutritional ecology, Food Webs, Carnivore Biology

Ph.D., 2007, Miami University, Ohio

Office: LSW 511

Email: shawn.wilder@okstate.edu

Lab website

Specific Interests

I'm interested in predator biology and nutritional ecology, both separately and combined. My lab has several current research areas. First, we are using nutritional ecology to study the mechanisms through which predators influence food webs and ecosystems. The goal of this work is to understand the dietary requirements of predators, how those requirements influence their foraging behavior, and then the consequences of this foraging behavior for other members of communities (e.g., prey, plants, nutrient cycling). A second research area in the lab is the study of how nutrition influences the behavior and life history of carnivores, including growth, aging, sexual selection and foraging. These studies of nutrition use a quantitative diet framework developed by my colleagues Prof. Steve Simpson and Prof. David Raubenheimer. In addition to quantifying the diet requirements of carnivores and how they interact with nutrient availability in the field, my lab is interested in the evolution of diet and how dietary requirements differ between carnivores and herbivores. Finally, research in the lab also examines applied questions related to nutrition and predators including: how diet influences invasion success of ants, how urbanization affects spiders, and how studies of diet regulation can be used to improve diets of endangered species in captivity.

Selected Publications

• Barnes, C.L., D. Hawlena, M. McCue and S.M. Wilder. 2019. Consequences of prey exoskeleton content for predator feeding and digestion. Oecologia 190: 1-9.
• Wilder, S.M., C.L. Barnes and D. Hawlena. 2019. Predicting predator nutrient intake from prey body contents. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 7: 42.
• Wilder, S.M. and P.D. Jeyasingh. 2016. Merging elemental and macronutrient approaches for a comprehensive study of energy and nutrient flows. Journal of Animal Ecology 85: 1427-1430.
• Wilder, S.M., D. Raubenheimer and S.J. Simpson. 2016. Moving beyond body condition indices as an estimate of fitness in ecological and evolutionary studies. Functional Ecology 30: 108-115.
• Simpson, S.J., F. Clissold, M. Lihoreau, F. Ponton, S.M. Wilder and D. Raubenheimer. 2015. Recent advances in the integrative nutrition of arthropods. Annual Review of Entomology 60: 293-311.
• Wilder, S.M., M. Norris, R.W. Lee, D. Raubenheimer and S.J. Simpson. 2013. Arthropod food webs become increasingly lipid-limited at higher trophic levels. Ecology Letters 16: 895-902.
• Wilder, S. M., D. A. Holway, A. V. Suarez, E. G. LeBrun and M. D. Eubanks. 2011. Intercontinental differences in resource use reveal the importance of mutualisms for fire ant invasions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 108: 20639-20644.