Just getting started putting together a web presence for all of my research, teaching, and editing projects.

Coming soon: my CV, links to publications, a blog, and a research repository.

Thanks for visiting, and let me know what you think.

Peter Breslin, Ph.D.

The figure shows the interaction of native vegetation and elevation as a predictor of relative growth rate of saguaros on my study site, the Desert Lab on Tumamoc Hill, at the University of Arizona. Basically, as native vegetation cover increases, growth rate increases at lower elevations and decreases at higher elevations. Excerpted from a paper (with co-authors Charlotte Brown, Frank Reichenbacher, Alberto Bourquez, Larry Venable, Susanna Rodriguez-Buritica, and Deborah Goldberg) recently accepted by the American Journal of Botany titled Establishment patterns of saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) at the microsite scale help explain saguaro regeneration and distributions in heterogenous, regional habitats. Not sure when it will see the light of day, but I assume it will be soon.

Here’s a cute pic of some three month old saguaros. Photo by friend and cactus grower, Eric Lundberg.

We’re on to a whole new project now, exploring the demography of the Tumamoc Hill saguaro population, and creating some models to predict what the future trajectory of the population might be. Apart from saguaro ecology and demography, I am also exploring the evolutionary relationships and ancestral biogeography of a clade of cacti in the Caribbean, and just launching another study the aim of which is to clarify taxonomic boundaries in the very confused genus, Pediocactus Britton & Rose.