Dr. Emmanuel Frimpong

FACULTY AFFILIATE   |   Global Change Center

Fish and Wildlife Conservation

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(540) 231-6880 •  frimp@vt.edu

Dr. Frimpong’s research focuses on the ecology and conservation of freshwater fishes, with emphasis on how anthropogenic alterations to habitats and landscapes differentially affect species as a result of differences in their life history traits and the nature of biotic interactions. Examples of specific landscape and habitat changes that have been the subject of recent and current research in Dr. Frimpong’s lab include agriculture, urban development, effluent discharges from aquaculture ponds, introduction of nonnative species, and climate change. A major theme is explaining the determinants of fish distributions, predicting how the distribution of species will respond to anthropogenic changes to their environment, and determining management and conservation solutions to these expected changes.

Dr. Frimpong’s research extends to sustainable production aquaculture (especially in sub-Saharan Africa) as an alternative to overdependence on natural fisheries to feed growing and increasingly urban populations. The interaction of aquaculture with nonnative species introduction in Africa is an emerging problem of special interest. Dr. Frimpong teaches courses in Fish Ecology and Conservation and Landscape Ecology and Species Distribution Modeling.