Professor Lattanzio first got aquanted with the Research Ranch as a Ph.D. candidate from Ohio University, investigating the ecological and phenotpic responses of lizard populations to historical disturbances.  He was focusing on the populations among sites varying in their prescribed burn history.  His work is being used to expand our understanding of the consequences of shifts in resource distributions caused by disturbance.

Matts' current work continues to focus on how species interact with ecological and environmental variation and the consequences of those interactions for their physiology, behavior, and fitness. At the ranch, his ongoing research foci since 2009 include: 1) continuing to evaluate the direct and indirect effects of fire and habitat variation on tree lizard populations and trophic networks, 2) determine how that variation contributes to polymorphisms in ecological traits in his study system, 3) determine the morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits that covary with disturbance history, and 4) combine this data with capture-mark-recapture estimates of survival to evaluate how environmental variation affects fitness. Characterization of species interactions with environmental variation in this manner is important to our understanding of the ecological basis for evolutionary divergence, and also provides us insight into their potential to adapt to global climate change. 

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Ph.D.  Ohio University
M.S.    East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
B.S.    The College of New Jersey

The Lattanzio Lab