VCU Department of Biology

Dr. Leonard Smock received his Ph.D. in 1979 from the University of North Carolina and is an aquatic ecologist whose primary research interests focus on community-level aspects of streams and riverine wetlands. He presently is the Director of VCU’s Rice Center for Environmental Sciences, the university’s biological field station situated on the James River. Much of his research has involved aspects of habitat utilization, resource partitioning and the trophic and production ecology of aquatic invertebrates as well as detritus dynamics in streams and wetlands. His work examines linkages between invertebrate and detritus dynamics in stream channels with those in fringing floodplains. He also conducts research on water pollution biology, in particular the use of invertebrates for monitoring and assessing water quality.