Outstanding Professor Award

Stream biodiversity is disproportionately lost to urbanization when flow permanence declines: evidence from southwestern North America

Nonlinear response of stream ecosystem structure to low-level phosphorus enrichment

How Many Mountains Can We Mine? Assessing the Regional Degradation of Central Appalachian Rivers by Surface Coal Mining

Effects of pulsed atrazine exposures on autotrophic community structure, biomass, and production in field-based stream mesocosms.

How novel is too novel? Stream community thresholds at exceptionally low levels of catchment urbanization.

Baylor University, a private Christian university and a nationally ranked research institution, provides a vibrant campus community for more than 15,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship.

Baylor University 

Dr. Ryan King, professor and graduate program director of biology at Baylor, directs students and manages all research projects in the Aquatic Ecology Lab. His areas of expertise are water quality of streams and rivers, particularly related to nutrient pollution, nuisance and harmful algal blooms, mountaintop coal mining, pesticides, nanomaterials, and runoff from urban and agricultural areas.

King is interested in determinants of species composition at higher trophic levels in aquatic ecosystems. He is particularly interested in how abiotic stressors and resource subsidies affect structure and function of macroinvertebrate and fish communities in a variety of aquatic habitats. He also uses aquatic biota as indicators of ecological integrity. These distinct but related interests are the basis for much of his past, present and intended future research, including:

• Estimating ecological thresholds using aquatic communities of algae, plants, macroinvertebrates and fish as indicators of nonlinear ecosystem changes, particularly in response to water quality (e.g., nutrients) or other anthropogenic stressors.

• Linking watershed features (e.g., land use) to water quality and aquatic biota in streams, wetlands and estuaries

• Implications of elemental (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) imbalances between consumers and their food in aquatic ecosystems (i.e., "ecological stoichiometry")

• Developing ecological indicators using aquatic biota for resource assessment at broad geographic scales

His research interests span a variety of disciplines, including community and landscape ecology, biogeochemistry, and environmental science and policy. The interdisciplinary nature of his research is attractive to many funding agencies and is particularly well suited for the participation of both undergraduate and graduate students in the field and his laboratory.

Dr. King graduated from Harding University with a bachelor's in biology. He received his master's and Ph.D. from Duke University, in environmental management and ecology, respectively. He was also an ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland.

Freshwater science to inform policy

Community and ecosystem ecology

Numeric water-quality criteria

Ecological thresholds

Streams and rivers

Marine and freswater aquatic ecosystems

Organism response to urbanization

Nutrient overenrichment

Landscape theory

Watershed patterns

Links between stressors and biological responses

Aquatic Ecology Lab

Popular herbicide doesn't have long-term effect on aquatic plant, study suggests

Research Professor of Biology

Underwater view of a few species of Ozark stream fishes in fast-moving water (riffle habitat).  The most notable species in the video is Campostoma anomalum, the central stoneroller.  Stonerollers are prolific grazers of benthic (on the stream bottom) algae, which will be highly evident in this video. Also note the darters in close view at the beginning of the video.

Research Videos / Aquatic Ecology Lab - Ryan S. King

Ozark stream life: grazing minnows in running water

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