Archives: News

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Skate to pub returns!

After two years of no ice, this winter we are having a banner year for skating on the canal! We even did our formerly-annual skate to the pub, and conditions were the best they've ever been for this 30-year tradition :)... More

Thursday, February 13, 2025

2024 research roundup – habitat fragmentation and so much more

In 2024 we published 12 papers. In our habitat fragmentation research: we found positive effects of fragmentation on the iconic Glanville fritillary butterfly metapopulation (pdf); we showed that patch-scale edge effects are not evidence of landscape-scale fragmentation effects (pdf); we found no lag effects of fragmentation on lichens (pdf); and... More

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Two new postdocs join the lab

At this year's annual potluck we welcomed two new postdocs to the lab. Sandara Brasil-Peixoto is an ecologist interested in how climate and anthropogenic changes, such as urban expansion and desertification, impact wild bee populations. Her current research aims to understand how urban environmental stressors impact bee morphological traits and... More

Thursday, October 24, 2024

International student researchers visiting the lab

This fall-winter we welcome two visiting student researchers to the lab. Marina de Souza is a PhD student from the Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil. While in the lab Marina will develop part of her thesis on road ecology using an extensive dataset to estimate the effect of paving on roadkill rate. She... More

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Welcoming visiting researcher Dr. Aino Hämäläinen

Dr. Aino Hämäläinen is spending a year in the lab to study how landscape structure affects the diversity of forest-dwelling lichens. Aino has conducted many lichen surveys across Swedish forests and during her time with us she will study the effects of habitat amount and fragmentation on lichen diversity and whether these effects differ... More

Thursday, June 1, 2023

2022 publications – fragmentation, connectivity, heterogeneity, and roads

In 2022 we published 9 papers on habitat loss and fragmentation, landscape connectivity, landscape heterogeneity, and road ecology. Under the general heading of habitat loss and fragmentation: (1) we showed that a given amount of habitat is more likely to be lost from small patches than from large patches (Riva et al. 2022), despite... More

Friday, July 22, 2022

Welcoming a new postdoc to the lab

This month we welcome a new postdoc, Carmen Galán, to the lab. Carmen is a tropical landscape ecologist with a particular focus on primates. She aims to understand species’ responses to human modified landscapes and how species traits influence those responses. For her postdoctoral work Carmen will use big global datasets to assess the... More

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Skate to the (actual) pub!

Last Friday we had our annual skate to the pub event. Covid restrictions eased up in time for us to go to an actual pub this year. At the starting point. Part-way there. The ice was rough but perseverance... More

Monday, February 7, 2022

Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA goes to three spatial ecologists

Last week I learned that I am to be one of three ecologists receiving the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge award. A big thank-you to Victor Arroyo-Rodriguez for nominating me! What a huge thrill! It was a special thrill to learn that I am to share the prize with Simon Levin and Steward Pickett,... More

Friday, October 29, 2021

New PhD Student Jessica Lockhart

This fall we welcome Jessica Lockhart to the lab to start her PhD degree. Jessica is interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying species responses to land use change. She completed a Masters of Natural Resources Management at the University of Manitoba where she studied the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on grassland... More

Monday, October 4, 2021

World Habitat Day: Nature Conservancy of Canada highlights our research

Today is World Habitat Day!! The Nature Conservancy of Canada is celebrating by highlighting the value of small habitat patches. The idea came to Sam Knight of NCC while she was attended my talk on the topic last August at the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution meeting. You can read Sam's blog here:... More

Monday, March 29, 2021

2020 Paper Round-up

In 2020 we published 9 papers on habitat loss and fragmentation, sustainable farmlands, and road ecology. On habitat loss and fragmentation, we updated the old "single small or several large" SLOSS debate (Fahrig 2020), showing that several small patches hold more species than few large ones. We found support for the Habitat Amount Hypothesis... More

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