Community Ecology & Biodiversity

BIOGRAPHY

I am a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University and the holder a tier II Canada Research Chair in Biodiversity Science. Prior to that I spent 4 years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Paris VI, France. I obtained my PhD from the Department of Biology, Silwood Park at Imperial College, London.

I am community ecologist working on two major themes: 1) Diversity and ecosystem functioning in heterogeneous environments (metacommunities), 2) The causes and consequences of maladaptation and biodiversity loss. Through a blend of experiment and theory my research has examined how habitat fragmentation and environmental variability interact to cause species extinction, and how dispersal may mitigate these effects. I am also working on the socioeconomic drivers of biodiversity loss and recently published work on the relationship between economic inequality and biodiversity. More recently I have combined experimental and theoretical approaches in ecology and evolution to understand the problem of the evolution and maintenance of antibiotic resistance. I have enjoyed collaborating with many excellent researchers on these topics.

I have supervised 3 PhD students and 3 Masters students and numerous undergraduate research projects. I teach courses in community ecology, conservation biology, and experimental ecology. I am an associate editor for Oecologia and Journal of Animal Ecology. I am currently leading a project to create a Centre for Biodiversity Science in Quebec that will bring together more 50 researchers across the province to foster collaboration and knowledge transfer to both government and public