I am a MSc student at UBC under the supervision of Diane Srivastava. I am presently working on two main projects. The first is a test of the Trophic Rank Hypothesis (Holt et al. 1999) and has been underway since September 2002, beginning as my undergraduate research project. The second project is my main MSc thesis, which examines the effect of reserves on regional biodiversity and population size. For both of these experiments I am using a moss micrarthropod community as a model system. These small communities house very high numbers of species, particularly Acari (mites) and Collembola (Springtails), which together comprise approximately 80% of the total number of species, in addition to microspiders, pseudoscorpions and other small insects. All of these species form a complex multi-trophic level community, which posesses the additional benefits of having short generation times, ease of manipulation and the ability to be completly censused.