Luke M. Bower, PhD

Dr. Bower received a MS degree from Southeaster Louisiana University and a PhD from Texas A&M University. Prior to becoming the assistant unit leader in the South Carolina Unit, he was post-doctoral fellow at Clemson University. Overall, his research focuses on understanding how changes in environmental gradients influences assemblage and functional structure of aquatic systems across multiple scales, apply community, evolutionary, and functional ecology concepts to inform the management and conservation of freshwater fishes. A primary focus of this research is to understand the roles stream flow plays in driving the ecology and evolution of fishes change across landscape gradients to better inform state flow standards. Another research focus is the use of functional traits to examine assemblage responses to environmental alteration and describe ecological patterns across levels of biological organization, niche dimensions, and spatial scales to inform the conservation and management of aquatic systems. His research encompasses several research areas including freshwater fish ecology, community ecology, flow ecology, and functional ecology. Dr. Bower teaches a graduate class in Functional Ecology.