Kirk Winemiller

Dr. Kirk Winemiller is a University Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor, and Senior Faculty Fellow in the Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University. He joined the faculty of Texas A&M University and Texas A&M AgriLife Research in 1992. He was the founding chair of the Interdisciplinary Program of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Texas A&M. His research addresses fish population and community ecology, life history strategies, and food web ecology with emphasis on rivers, streams and estuaries. He has conducted field research at locations throughout Texas as well as tropical regions of the world, and numerous international researchers and students have visited his lab for extended periods. He has served on numerous scientific committees and panels reviewing science and policy issues associated with management of fish, environmental flows and water quality. He has been associate editor for Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (AFS), Journal of Fish Biology (Fisheries Soc. British Isles), Copeia (Amer. Soc. Ichthyol. Herpetol.), Ecology and Ecological Monographs (Ecological Soc. Amer.), and serves on editorial boards for other scientific journals.

Fish ecology and evolution, community ecology, and ecosystem ecology in aquatic habitats.

Research in the Winemiller Aquatic Ecology Lab is strongly field-oriented, with studies conducted at sites throughout Texas, Latin America, Africa, and, more recently, Southeast Asia. Field research is conducted mostly in fluvial ecosystems (streams, rivers, estuaries) and adopts descriptive, comparative and experimental approaches.  The research is strongly oriented towards advancement of both basic scientific understanding as well as options for better conservation of biodiversity and the ecosystems that support it.  Topics of greatest interest are:

• Life history strategies, environmental variation and population dynamics
• Food webs and trophic ecology
• Population response to flow variation
• Species assemblage structure, environmental variation, and species functional traits
• Species diversity, biogeography and evolution

Winemiller, K.O., L.C. Kelso Winemiller, and C.G. Montaña. 2021. Peacock Bass: Diversity, Ecology and Conservation. Academic Press, Elsevier.

Bokhutlo, T., E.R. Cunha, and K.O. Winemiller. 2021. Ephemeral habitat sustains high fish α-diversity and β-diversity during drought in a subtropical semiarid wetland. Biotropica 53:778-785.

Albert, J.S., G. Destouni, S.M. Duke-Sylvester, A.E. Magurran, T. Oberdorff, R.E. Reis, K.O. Winemiller, and W.J. Ripple. 2021. Scientists’ warning to humanity on freshwaters. Ambio 50:85-94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01318-8

Keppeler, F.W., K.O. Winemiller. 2020. Incorporating indirect pathways in body size-trophic position relationships. Oecologia 194:177-191.

Keppeler, F.W., C.G. Montaña, and K.O. Winemiller. 2020. The relationship between trophic level and body size in fishes depends on functional traits. Ecological Monographs 90(4) e01415.