General Research Interests My interests are ever changing but have included population and community ecology, evolutionary ecology, natural history of desert lizards, resource partitioning, reproductive tactics, foraging theory, allocation, design constraints, thermoregulation, metapopulations, historical accident and biogeography, species diversity, macrodescriptors, pseudocommunities, phylogenetic systematics, computer simulation of model systems, emergent properties of ecological systems, metapopulations, indirect interactions among populations, disturbance, succession, and landscape ecology. My graduate students are autonomous scientists who not only obtain their own funding but also design, execute, and publish their own research (they also land academic positions at major universities -- about half of them are now tenured). They work on a wide range of projects, both theoretical and empirical, as well as on a diversity of organisms including ants, butterflies, eigenvalues, grasshoppers, protozoans, frogs, fish and lizard communities, as well as various species of birds. Currently, I am working on the fire succession cycle in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia and on phylogenetic systematic studies of Ctenotus skinks and varanid lizards. Neonate Menetia greyi, one of the world's smallest terrestrial vertebrates. (About 3x-4x times life size.) Research projects Publications Past Graduate Students To all prospective graduate students Courses Taught by E.R.Pianka Herpetology at UT Pianka's Ten Commandments Obituary Return to Pianka lab page