William E. SnyderView profile
Professor
William E. Snyder is a Professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences. His research integrates ecological principles to address critical challenges in species conservation, sustainable agriculture, and human health through natural pest management solutions. Dr. Snyder's work focuses on sustainable agriculture and biological control of pests, with expertise in food safety, plant-microbe-insect interactions, and climate change impacts on agroecosystems. His lab investigates how restoring natural biodiversity resolves conflicts between conservation and food production, emphasizing that ecosystem health underpins pest management and safe food systems. Key approaches include field studies on working farms, molecular eco-genomics, and landscape-scale modeling of species interactions. Recent publications reveal strong trends in climate-agriculture interfaces, food safety ecology, and genomic applications in pest management. Research increasingly examines trade-offs between ecosystem services (e.g., bird-mediated pest control) and risks (e.g., pathogen transmission), while advancing RNAi technologies and nutrient management for sustainable pest suppression. Field-based molecular work dominates current outputs, reflecting the lab's shift toward mechanistic eco-genomic explanations of ecological patterns. The Snyder Lab maintains active collaborations with growers across diverse projects including pastured poultry systems, soil nutrient-pest interactions, and climate-driven whitefly outbreaks. Ongoing fieldwork on organic farms and molecular analyses in the lab support translational research that bridges fundamental ecology with agricultural applications. The lab actively recruits students for projects spanning statistical modeling, GIS analysis, and experimental field ecology.









