Dr. Phil Matich

I graduated with my PhD in 2014 investigating the extrinsic and intrinsic factors shaping bull shark habitat use and trophic interactions in the Florida Coastal Everglades to understand how environmental change attributed to restoration may alter their roles within estuarine ecosystems, a project I am still involved in as it progresses to answer more ecologically applied questions. Currently, I am a post-doctoral research fellow at Sam Houston State University, where I’m developing a coastal marine ecology program that is investigating how water management and sea level rise affect coastal food web dynamics and the roles sharks and other predators play within them. We are also developing terrestrial experiments and monitoring programs in piney woods ecosystems to test hypotheses derived from coastal research, including spill over effects of conservation areas, effects of disturbance on community structure in fragmented ecosystems, and the role environmental fluctuations play in shaping phenotypic divergence within populations. For more information on current and past research, please visit my website: https://sites.google.com/site/matichphilip/