My research fields are population and community ecology. My research has two overlapping phases with the continuing thread of an evolutionary approach towards life history adaptations to uncertain environments. All of my fieldwork currently is at the Mountain Lake Biological Station.

The first phase focused on amphibians in temporary ponds and included experimental studies of food web structure and function and genetic studies of paedomorphosis in salamanders. More recently this work shifted to conservation issues and used capture-recapture methods to study metapopulation dynamics in an ensemble of ponds.

My second phase focuses on forest dynamics using the comparative rather than the experimental method. Population studies of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) and American chestnut (Castanea dentata) complement collaborative work with Becky Wilbur on the history of the hardwood forests near Mountain Lake. Striped maple has environmental sex determination and thrives in second growth forests that have been protected from fire. The American chestnut is the base of a three-trophic level system of the tree, a fungal disease (Cryphonectria parasitica), and a viral disease of the fungus. .

Wilbur, H. M . and V. H. W. Rudolf. 2006. Life History Evolution in Uncertain Environments: Bet-hedging in Time. The American Naturalist. 168:398-411.

Don R. Church, Larissa L. Bailey, Henry M. Wilbur , William L. Kendall, James E. Hines. 2007. Iteroparity in the variable environment of the salamander Ambystoma tigrinum . Ecology 88(4):891-903.

Grover, M. C. and H. M. Wilbur . 2002. The ecology of ecotones: Interactions between salamanders on a complex environmental gradient. Ecology 83(8):2112-2123.

Wilbur, H. M. 1997. Experimental ecology of food webs: Complex systems in temporary ponds. Ecology 78(8):2279-2302. (MacArthur Award Paper)