Principal Investigator
​Dr. Mary I. O'Connor

​Associate Professor, Department of Zoology
Associate Director, Biodiversity Research Centre
Affiliate, Hakai Institute

University of British Columbia 
#4200-6270 University Blvd. 
Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z4

CV

Phone: 604-827-5653
email: oconnor@zoology.ubc.ca

Check out the academic family tree!

Current Graduate Students​

PhD Student: Emily Adamczyk
Co-supervised by Laura Parfrey

I am interested in how phenology influences temporal dynamics in seagrass ecosystems. This information may help us find “windows of opportunity” to restore critical seagrass habitat. Additionally, I want to investigate how anthropogenic stressors, such as ocean acidification and climate change, affect seagrass biodiversity and ecosystem functions.

Check out Emily's personal website here.

PhD Student: John Cristiani

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.

PhD Student: Kaleigh Davis
I am interested in how temperature affects community structure and function. My research focuses on how differences in temperature sensitivity among biological processes drive changes in species interactions. I am using bacteria and phytoplankton mesocosm experiments to understand these processes and predict how communities may change in warming lakes and oceans.​  ​

PhD student: ​Mairin Deith
Co-supervised by Jedediah Brodie

In tropical forests across the globe, people rely on wild animals for food. As forest-dwelling human populations grow, demand for meat increases, and forests become more accessible to hunters, ecologically and socially important game species are facing extinction. I work on developing reliable predictors of hunting pressure in data-deficient countries and assessing whether traditional and participatory harvest management strategies could improve hunting sustainability. 

Check out Mairin's personal website here.

PhD Student: Coreen Forbes

​My research focuses on phenology (the timing of periodic seasonal events) in eelgrass communities. I am using field surveys and experiments to identify cyclical changes in community composition, what drives these changes and how climatic warming might alter ecological time.

PhD Student: Keila Stark

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.

MSc student: ​Evgeniya (Jane) Yangel
​Co-supervised by Laura Parfrey

My current research project focuses on microbes in freshwater systems. In particular, I want to understand how food web organization and climate change together affect bacterial community structure and what predators are primarily controlling bacterial abundances. This work will allow to assess future ecosystem health under global warming by parameterizing models that will take into account a higher number of trophic levels in the community.​

Visiting PhD Student: Minako Ito

​My 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.

Postdoctoral Research Fellows

Devin Kirk, PhD
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow

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.

Patrick Thompson, PhD
Killam Postdoctoral Fellow

My research integrates theory and empirical methods to study how ecological communities reorganize under climate change. I wish to understand how changing landscape connectivity, food-web interactions, and adaptation combine to determine the structure and composition of future communities. By developing and testing theory on how these processes interactively modify the response of natural communities to environmental change, I hope to inform strategies for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem functioning as conditions change.

Check out Patrick's personal website here.

Jacob Usinowicz​, PhD

I am an ecologist interested in understanding the natural processes that shape current and future patterns of biodiversity. I use ecological theory and experiments to understand the current abundance and distribution of species, and forecast what will happen as environmental change reshuffles natural communities. In my current work in the O’Connor lab, I am developing a new theoretical framework to understand how impacts of climate change on individual species can cascade through food webs via species interactions. A primary goal of this theory is to unite our understanding of population dynamics and energetics into one framework to jointly consider their importance for species persistence. I draw on theoretical developments across disciplines as diverse as physics, chemistry, and computation that use statistical (information) entropy as a basis to model complex dynamical systems.

Check out Jacob's personal website here.

Matt Whalen, PhD
Hakai Coastal Initiative Fellow

My research focuses on understanding the Influences of environmental variation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across scales. I use a combination of experiments and observations to test how heterogeneity in environmental conditions influences biodiversity and rates of ecological processes. My work spans multiple systems and explicitly considers how environment-biodiversity relationships change from fine to course scales, both in time and space. Recent examples of my work include experimental tests of how topographic variation at small to large spatial scales influences community assembly on rocky shores and observations of how recruitment in seaweed and animal communities varies across habitat types along a wave exposure gradient. 

​Check out Matt's personal website here.

Research Associates

Devin Lyons, PhD

Aquatic ecosystems are under pressure from a wide variety of anthropogenic “stressors”, ranging from local-scale toxin and nutrients inputs, to widespread species introductions and overharvesting, to global climate change and ocean acidification. Effective environmental policy development and management rely on a capacity to predict the consequences of these pressures and potential management responses. In hopes of building this capacity, I work to understand the spatial distribution and impacts of multiple forms of anthropogenic environmental change, and the mechanisms that cause them to interact. I have used a combination of experiments and observational studies to study local environmental problems, but much of my resent work involves the analysis or synthesis of existing datasets to seek generality and address related questions at larger scales.

Lab Alumni

Past Postdoctoral Researchers

Sarah Joy Bittick (2017-2019)

Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow 
Project title: Identifying nutrient thresholds for sustainable management of British Columbia seagrass beds

​Currently: Assistant Professor, Loyola Marymount University, Seaver College of Science and Engineering, Department of Biology 

Sarah Joy's website

Jennifer Sunday (2015-2017)

​Currently: Assistant Professor and William Dawson Scholar. 

Robin Elahi (2014-2015)

​Currently: Post-Doctoral Fellow at Hopkins Marine Station. 

Adrian Stier (2012-2013)

​Currently: Assistant Professor and PI of the Ocean Recoveries Lab at UC Santa Barbara 

Past Graduate Students

Joey Bernhardt, PhD. (2018)

​Thesis: "The thermal ecology of populations and ecosystem services in a changing world​".

​Currently: ​Nereus Postdoctoral Fellow

​Joey's website

Matt Siegle, PhD. (2017)

Co-supervised by Rick Taylor
​
​Thesis: "Heat wave impacts across scales in the splash pool copepod, Tigriopus californicus".
​ 

Dana Haggarty, PhD. (2015)

Thesis: "Community structure and availability of primary producers to herbivores along a temperature gradient"
​
Currently: Inshore Rockfish and Lingcod Program Head, Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Natalie Caulk, MSc. (2015)

Co-supervised by Jon Shurin
​Thesis: "An evaluation of the effectiveness of rockfish conservation areas in British Columbia, Canada".
​
​Currently: Associate Director at California Coastkeeper Alliance

Natalie Stafl, MSc. (2013)

Thesis: "Quantifying the effect of hiking disturbance on American pika (Ochotona princeps) foraging behaviour"
Currently: Executive Director for the Columbia-Shuswap Invasive Species Society.

Ross Whippo, MSc. (2013)

Thesis: "Seagrass epifaunal communities of Barkley Sound: Epifaunal diversity varies across small spatial and temporal scales"

Currently: Biologist at The Smithsonian, Tennenbaum Marine Observatory Network, MarineGEO
​
Ross's website

Past Research Associates

Michelle Tseng, PhD

Currently: Assistant Professor at UBC

Past Undergraduate students

Cori-Anne Huisman, BSc. Honours (2016)

Gwendolyn Griffiths, BSc. Honours (2016) and Field Assistant

Thesis: "From red to green: Controls of Smithora naiadum colonization of Zostera marina meadows"

Nicole Knight, BSc. Honours (2014) and Lab Assistant

Thesis: "The variable impacts of predation on seagrass mesograzer communities in Trevor Channel, British Columbia"
​
Currently: PhD student in Frederic Guichard's lab at McGill University

Jemma Titheridge, BSc. Honours (2014-2015)

Carolyn Prentice, BSc. Honours (2011-2012)

Thesis: "The relative impacts of three mesograzer species on eelgrass (Zostera marina) epiphyte abundance in Barkley Sound, B.C."
Currently: Nearshore Research Technician at Hakai Institute

Sarah Amundrud, BSc. Honours (2011-2012)

Thesis: "The relative importance of predators and nutrients on eelgrass benthic food webs in British Columbia. Ecology and Environmental Biology".
Currently: PhD Student in Diane Srivastava's lab at UBC
​

Past Directed Studies Students

Zander Chila (2016-2017)
Amir Gohari (2016-2017)
Scott Brydle (2015-2016)
Sachiko Ouchi​ (2015-2016)
Theodore Back (2015-2016)
Melanie Overhill (2013-2014)
Stephanie Connor (2011-2012)
David Xiao Song (2012-2013)
Andrew Huang (2011-2012)
Coreen Forbes (2010-2011)
Patricia Sun (2010-2011)

Past Lab Technicians and Volunteers

Marcus Campbell (2016-2017)
William Ou (2016-2017)
Allison Dennert (2015-2016)
Melinda Yogendran (2014-2015)​
John Cristiani (2012-2013)
Winnie Cheung
Nick Uthaikhaifar (2011-2012)
Sanjna Hothi (2012)
Boaz Hung (2011)