Upon establishing the Environmental Resilience Institute (ERI) at Indiana University, the leaders and visionaries reported four main goals. The first goal stated that the supported research would create “accurate predictions about coming changes in weather patterns, water, plants and animals, and disease risk.” This goal focused on directly predicting what Hoosiers would have to face, such as economically-costly extreme weather conditions or an increase in tick-borne diseases. Equally important, the ERI wanted to create predictions about biodiversity, an indicator of the health of an ecosystem that provides countless services to society.
Enter Dr. Jason Bertram, a theoretical biologist.