Mark Vellend - Personnel

Madelaine Anderson (Ph.D. Student)
Madelaine.Anderson@usherbrooke.ca

Broadly, I am interested in how plant communities and landscapes are impacted by global change. Growing up, I spent all my summers in northern Canada, which inspired curiosity about and passion for northern ecosystems. The Arctic tundra biome is changing quickly with major implications on biodiversity, climate, and humans. My doctoral research is situated within the Arctic portion of the Canadian Airborne Biodiversity Observatory (CABO) project. Working with CABO and Team Shrub, led by Isla Myers-Smith and based out of the University of Edinburgh, I will explore biodiversity change in the tundra biome using remote sensing approaches and field-based surveys. I will ask questions about linking tundra plant spectral signatures to tundra plant phenology, plant traits and biodiversity.

Tadhg Carroll (Postdoc, Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, co-supervised with Maria Dornelas & Chris Thomas)
tadhg.carroll@york.ac.uk

I am interested in all aspects of Ecology, but my work has focused to date on Community Ecology. My research at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity focuses primarily on investigating biodiversity change in contemporary ecological assemblages. Biodiversity is complex, and needs to be viewed in many different ways in order to understand how it has changed in the past, or to have any hope of predicting future trajectories. I’m keen to uncover processes underlying biodiversity change, as well as documenting various aspects of empirical trends over time. Current lines of research include attempts to understand adaptive dynamics in ecological communities, and if and how rare species become common and common species become rare. I also have a deep interest, and gradually growing skillset, in Applied Bayesian Statistics and how such techniques can be used to tease knowledge out from nature.

Charlotte Brown (Postdoc)
Charlotte.Brown@USherbrooke.ca

I am a plant community ecologist who uses a blend of field observations and experiments to investigate the factors underlying the wide-ranging responses of species to environmental shifts and global change. I am particularly interested in how this variation in species responses can scale up to impact larger-scale community and ecosystem dynamics, particularly species interactions. I am driven by overarching concepts rather than being confined to particular ecosystems, leading me to work in a diverse range of environments such as grasslands, deserts, and forests .

During my postdoc at the Université de Sherbrooke, I am examining the climatic drivers of species' phenological shifts and how variation in species sensitivities, both in magnitude and to particular climatic events, impact current and future species interactions, flowering synchrony, and overall community structure.

Najwa Houmam (M.Sc. Student)
Najwa.Houmam@USherbrooke.ca

Je suis intéressée par la biodiversité des plantes et comment les écosystèmes répondent aux changements climatiques, pour mieux comprendre comment ces changements peuvent affecter le calendrier phénologique. Pour ma maîtrise, je vais effectuer un travail de terrain dans le Parc national du Mont Mégantic, Québec. Je vais utiliser la photographie en temps réel et autres méthodes pour répondre aux questions suivantes : (i) Comment les changements climatiques peuvent impacter la phénologie des arbres à travers le temps et l’espace? (ii) Comment les relations phénologie-climat varient-elles d'une espèce à l'autre et d'un environnement à l'autre?

I have broad interests in plant biodiversity and how ecosystems respond to climate change, with a particular focus on the timing of biological events (phenology). For my Master's degree, I will conduct field work in Parc national du Mont Mégantic, Quebec. Using repeat photography and field validation, I will address the following questions: (i) What is the impact of climate change on tree leaf phenology over space and time? (ii) How do phenology-climate relationships vary across species and environments?

Personnel

Past Graduate Students and Post-docs