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!

Graduate Students

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: Emily Adamczyk

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: 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.

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: 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: ​Mairin Deith
Co-supervised by Jedediah Brodie

Across the globe, many people rely on wild animals for sustenance. This is especially true in tropical rainforests, where bushmeat hunting provides a significant portion of rural peoples' diets. Due to population growth, increased forest access from logging, and the widespread use of firearms, hunted species that are relied upon for food and ecosystem services are disappearing from the forest. My graduate work focuses on developing reliable predictors of hunting pressure and using these predictors to test the efficacy of various sustainable hunting strategies. Specifically, I am exploring whether traditional resource management schemes can preserve muntjac deer, mouse deer, bearded pig, and pig-tailed macaque populations in Malaysian Borneo.

MSc student: ​Jane Yangel

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 asses future ecosystem health under global warming by parameterizing models that will take into account a higher number of trophic levels in the community.​

Postdoctoral Research Fellows

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.

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.

Sarah Joy Bittick, PhD

I am a marine community ecologist interested in how multiple anthropogenic pressures influence trophic structure, species diversity, and overall community dynamics. My current postdoctoral project takes an interdisciplinary approach to identify nutrient thresholds for sustainable management of British Columbia seagrass beds. In British Columbia, there is a long history of community effort to protect seagrass, but little formal legislative action. While federal measures are progressing under the convention on biological diversity (CBD), federal efforts will often miss seagrass, which occurs only at the coastal margins. Local action is necessary to protect seagrass, as individual communities and municipalities act to limit or reduce seagrass-harming actions. Together with my academic, conservation, and government collaborators, we will use a combination of historical data, nutrient loading models, and experimental approaches, to identify negative tipping points that may in Boundary Bay seagrass communities in response to nutrient loading for use in water quality management planning. This project will use a bottom-up ecological approach rather than top-down, with the goal of linking the possible negative impact of excessive nutrient input in seagrass beds to trophic use by fish and birds.​

Check out Sarah's personal website here.

Undergraduate Students

Keila Stark, BSc Honours Student & Research Assistant 

​In marine environments where water movement facilitates species dispersal between sites, it is valuable to consider ecological communities as part of a larger network of interacting communities. My Honours research aims to determine the abiotic, biotic, and spatial factors that drive community assembly in eelgrass ecosystems through the lens of metacommunity theory.  I am also interested in the effect Marine Protected Areas have on the mechanisms driving community assembly.