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Professor
Phone: (205) 348-4136 Email: huryn@bama.ua.edu Alexander Huryn received a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of Georgia in 1986 and completed his postdoctoral research at the University of Alabama in 1991. He was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Alabama in 2003. He has been a Professor at the University of Alabama since 2008. |
Research Interests
I am a freshwater ecologist with a strong interest in how local, landscape, and regional factors affect the structure and productivity of stream communities. These factors may be physical, such as stream channel form, water temperature or periods of wetting, drying and freezing, or biological, such as differences in food sources or food-web structure. I have found that stream productivity is usually controlled by several factors that operate simultaneously, often in complex and surprising ways. A predictive understanding of such factors and their interactions is critical for making sound decisions concerning the management and restoration of stream communities. In addition to my academic interests, I am also a committed field naturalist who has been lucky enough to have worked extensively in some truly spectacular streams in the Smoky Mountains, southern New Zealand, Panama and Arctic Alaska. My most recent research has focused on Arctic streams in the vicinity of the Toolik Field Station in Alaska. This region supports a remarkable diversity of stream types. Here my students and I have been using habitat-template theory to gain understanding of how landscape attributes control stream food-web complexity and productivity at both the catchment and regional scales.
Selected Publications
Huryn, A.D. K.A. Slavik, R.L. Lowe, S.M. Parker, D.S. Anderson & B.J. Peterson 2005. Landscape heterogeneity and the biodiversity of Arctic stream communities: a habitat template analysis. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 62:1905-1919.
Chadwick, M. & A.D. Huryn. 2005. Response of stream macroinvertebrate production to atmospheric nitrogen deposition and channel drying. Limnology & Oceanography 50:228-236.
Huryn, A.D., R. Riley, R.G. Young, K. Peacock & C.J. Arbuckle. 2002. Natural-abundance stable C and N isotopes indicate weak upstream-downstream linkage of consumer food webs in a river-floodplain system. Archiv für Hydrobiologie 153:177-196.
Huryn, A.D., V.M. Butz Huryn, L. Tsomides & C.J. Arbuckle 2002. Catchment land-use, macroinvertebrates and detritus processing in headwater streams: taxonomic richness versus function. Freshwater Biology 47:401-415.
Huryn, A.D. & J.B. Wallace. 2000. Life history and production of stream insects. Annual Review of Entomology 45:83-110.
Young, R.G. & A.D. Huryn 1999. Effects of land-use on stream metabolism and organic matter turnover. Ecological Applications 9:1359-1376.
Huryn, A.D. 1998. Ecosystem-level evidence for top-down and bottom-up control of production in a grassland stream system. Oecologia 115:173-183.
Huryn, A.D. & M.W. Denny 1997. A biomechanical hypothesis explaining upstream movements by the freshwater snail Elimia. Functional Ecology 11:472-483.
Young, R.G. & A.D. Huryn 1996. Inter-annual variation in discharge controls patterns of ecosystem metabolism along a grassland river continuum. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 53:2199-2211.
Huryn, A.D. 1996. An appraisal of the Allen Paradox in a New Zealand trout stream. Limnology and Oceanography 41:243-252.
Huryn, A.D., A.C. Benke & G.M. Ward 1995. Direct and indirect effects of regional geology on the distribution, production and biomass of the freshwater snail Elimia. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 14:519-534.
Huryn, A.D. 1990. Growth and voltinism of lotic midge larvae: patterns across an Appalachian mountain basin. Limnology and Oceanography 35:339-351.
Huryn, A.D. & J.B. Wallace. 1987. Local geomorphology as a determinant of macrofaunal production in a mountain stream. Ecology 68:1932-1942.