Welcome to the

Pennuto Lab

Dr. Chris Pennuto

Buffalo State College

(716) 878-4105

Welcome

The ‘lab’ is actually a pretty small research space located on the main campus of Buffalo State College (sometimes known as SUNY College at Buffalo). My graduate and undergraduate students manage to share the space with an incubator, UV-VIS spectrophotometer, CHN analyzer, ovens/furnace, a few computers, and lots of nets, sample bottles, and aquaria. We also perform much of our work at the Great Lakes Center Field Station located near the source of the Niagara River at the eastern end of Lake Erie. The lab is also the final resting place for a large number of Great Lake and tributary stream invertebrates (all for science).

Research in the lab focuses mainly on invasive species issues relative to Great Lake and tributary stream ecology. Our recent target organisms have been round gobies and invasive amphipods and their impacts on nutrient cycling, decomposition rates, primary production, and benthic community composition. The lab has been involved with a wide range of projects in collaboration with researchers around the Lakes and in neighboring states. Recent projects we have participated or led include mercury cycling in invertebrate food webs, nearshore nutrient effects and fate in Lakes Ontario and Erie, round goby swimming performance and stream ecosystem effects, crayfish habitat partitioning in NY streams, ecology of chironomid ectosymbioses, and invertebrate predator avoidance behavior.

Course taught

Environmental Biology (BIO 104)

Introduction to Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior (BIO 213)

Aquatic Entomology (BIO 389)

Stream Ecology (BIO 430/612)

Freshwater Macroinvertebrate Ecology (BIO 612)

Research Methods (BIO 620)

Pennuto CV

Graduate and undergraduate research

Research interests

Pennuto publication list and pdfs