Current lab members
Graduate Students
PhD Student: Emily Adamczyk (she/her)
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MSc Student: Matt Cristensen (he/him)
Reducing carbon emissions and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere is key to mitigating climate change. Blue carbon refers to the carbon sequestered by coastal marine habitats and Canada has the longest coastline in the world. My research aims to collate the extent of Canada’s eelgrass habitat mapping and quantify the blue carbon sequestered there. Through this research I hope to 1) advance the understanding of carbon storage drivers in eelgrass habitats and 2) link conservation and protection of sensitive coastal habitats to climate mitigation and coastal resource management.
I’ve joined the lab with 10 years of experience in conservation working predominately on BC’s Coast for Ducks Unlimited Canada as well as volunteering with Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society. |
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PhD Student: John Cristiani (he/him)I'm interested in how dispersal connects nearshore habitat and what this means for biodiversity patterns and maintenance. I seek to model landscape-scale patterns of community connectivity by simulating movement with biophysical models. This work will help to identify marine areas of high conservation value to prioritize for management.
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I am an ecologist interested in the application of fundamental ecology to conservation issues. I explore this through two main research avenues. First, I use ecological theory in combination with lab and field experiments to understand how temperature affects nutrient availability, and downstream consequences for aquatic community structure and function. Specifically, I consider biological nitrogen fixation as a mechanism for temperature sensitive nitrogen supply to photosynthesis. Second, I use field surveys and experiments to study drivers of eelgrass ecosystem degradation over the past four decades in James Bay, Quebec. I work on a collaborative team with scientists from all over Canada and local Cree experts to understand the current abundance and distribution as well as the capacity for eelgrass recovery in the Bay.
Outside of my research, I also run the Conservation Discussion Group and am active in UBC’s sustainability community. Check out Kaleigh's personal website here. |
PhD student: Mairin Deith (she/her)
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PhD Student: Coreen Forbes (she/her)I study how species’ traits interact with environmental gradients to determine patterns of diversity using experimental and observational approaches. Using experimental manipulations of temperature in a freshwater zooplankton system, I explore the mechanisms of thermal response. In these experiments, I determine how responses to temperature propagate from lower to higher levels of biological organization by comparing thermal response at the level of organismal metabolism, resource consumption, population growth rate and competition between species. I also use observational studies in eelgrass-associated invertebrate communities to explore how spatial and environmental gradients interact with species traits to generate patterns of diversity at larger scales. By linking ecological theory to controlled experiments to patterns observed in nature, I aim to contribute to our understanding of biodiversity across scales and now biological systems may respond to a changing climate.
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PhD Student: Keila Stark (she/her)Accurately predicting how marine faunal populations will respond to warming seas is critical to informing management plans. An existing approach to achieving this is modeling future species distributions based on estimated thermal tolerance ranges from current distributions, however this misses other ecological pathways (ie. trophic) through which warming might affect a taxon of interest. I am interested in investigating how warming might influence the abundance and distribution of Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) via temperature effects on its prey abundance through trophic and metabolic theory of ecology frameworks.
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MSc student: Evgeniya (Jane) Yangel (she/her)
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Visiting PhD Student: Minako ItoMy research focuses on comparing two seagrass species, eelgrass Zostera marina and dwarf eelgrass Z. japonica. While both species often coexist in intertidal habitats around BC, Z. marina is native and Z. japonica is non-native and is introduced from Japan. I am interested in how invertebrate communities differ between two seagrass species. Also, I am interested in how those relationship changes 1) over time and 2) in different sites/regions. In my ultimate goal, I would like to compare temporal and spatial variability between Z. marina and Z. japonica in BC to variability in Hokkaido, Japan, where both seagrass species are native.
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Postdoctoral Research Fellows
Norah Brown, PhD (she/her)
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The overarching goal of my research is to improve our understanding of biological communities in order to increase the accuracy of conservation efforts and forecasting of responses to climate change. I enjoy using modern and creative approaches to address challenging and pressing questions. My research interests fall under two main themes: (1) community response to environmental and biological stress and (2) cross-ecosystem fluxes. Some of my recent work focused on the ecological consequences of one of the most serious threats to marine ecosystems: ocean acidification. I used a variety of methods (field-based experiments, surveys, meta-analysis) to understand how marine communities respond to ocean acidification and how responses are shaped by species interactions or food availability. I'm currently working on marine subsidies to terrestrial island ecosystems via the 100 Islands Project at the Hakai institute. We are building on and advancing theories of island biogeography, food web ecology, and resource limitation.
Check out Norah's personal website here. |
Julián Idrobo, PhD (he/him)
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Devin Kirk, PhD (he/him)
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I am a quantitative ecologist broadly interested in how environmental stressors, especially those related to anthropogenic change, impact host-parasite interactions. The majority of my research focuses on developing a better mechanistic framework for predicting how climate change will alter infectious disease at both the individual and population levels. My work is typically an iterative process of mathematical modeling and conducting ecological experiments, where I generate data to parameterize models across environmental factors, make predictions, and then test key ecological theory by confronting my predictions with data.
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Edward Tekwa, PhD (they/them)
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Jacob Usinowicz, PhD (he/him)
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