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

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Carleton highlights habitat fragmentation research

Last summer three of our MSc students conducted arduous field work on the effects of forest loss, fragmentation, and connectivity on birds, small mammals and plants. Now Carleton's communications team has highlighted our work on habitat fragmentation, including photos of Adrianne, Lindsay, and Joe in the field. Read it here:... More

Friday, January 1, 2021

Two new lab babies

Lab productivity went way up at the end of 2020, with the arrival of two new babies only 15 minutes apart (!) on December 17th. PhD student Iman Momeni holding baby Liyana. PhD student Samantha Morin holding baby... More

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Five new additions to the lab this year

This year we welcome - via zoom - five new lab members! Sean Patterson is an MSc student. He will be looking at road and traffic effects on porcupine populations. Porcupines have only one baby per year so we predict that road kill has a big effect on their populations. Alec Medd is also... More

Monday, September 7, 2020

Conservation Science faculty position at Carleton

Carleton is advertising a faculty position in Conservation Science. The closing date is October 1st. Here is the link to the ad: https://carleton.ca/biology/employment-opportunities/#sect1.2 Please distribute this far and wide, especially to landscape ecologists :)... More

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Small crop fields and biodiversity: The Conversation

The Conversation is a news outlet that provides a link between research and the public. Articles in The Conversation are written by researchers in collaboration with an editor to make them engaging to the public and other media. This week The Conversation published an article about our work showing that agricultural landscapes with small... More

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Skate to Pub, and SLOSS

Last week was the lab's annual skate to the pub. As you can see, it was a fabulous day. The ice was so good even a Brazilian gave it a go!    On the way Arrived At the pub   Meanwhile, I was over here in Germany on sabbatical, running a workshop on "SLOSS... More

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

No-fly sabbatical in Europe

Five years ago I gave up flying. I had discovered that air travel was by far the biggest part of my personal carbon footprint - four times as big as heating my house with gas (which we've now stopped doing) and ten times as big as the small amount of driving I do. To... More

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Tree of Life at Convocation

This fall I had the honour of giving the convocation address. Here's what I said:   "Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Chair of the Board of Governors, colleagues, graduates, and cheering section: President Bacon has asked me to speak about sustainability and to give you some advice. He's given me just 5 minutes. This won't be easy... More

Thursday, September 26, 2019

4 new MSc students join the lab this fall

This fall we welcome four new MSc students to the lab. Kayla Attinello will test the "space for time" assumption that is common throughout ecology, especially landscape ecology. For example, if forest bird diversity is lower in a landscape with less forest than in a landscape with more forest (space), can we conclude that... More

Thursday, September 26, 2019

2 Brazilian PhD students to spend the winter in the lab

Two Brazilian students will spend part of their PhD's with us in the lab this winter, thanks to scholarships from the Brazilian Government. Tainá Assis is studying at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research. She is researching how the community of small mammals is changing due to the advancing agricultural frontier in the... More

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Blast from the past

Indian researcher, Hari Sridhar (see photo), has posted an interview about my 1985 (!) paper in Ecology on his blog site called "Reflections on Papers Past: Revisiting old papers in ecology and evolution through interviews with their authors" Here is the link to the interview:... More

Friday, April 12, 2019

A year in publications – 2018

Last year the Fahrig lab published 9 journal articles on amphibians, bats, birds, and insects, and more. Here are some of our results. Landscape context is more important than wetland buffers for farmland amphibians. Bat and bat prey abundance are higher at organic than conventional fields. Habitat specialist birds disperse farther than habitat... More

Friday, April 12, 2019

How big is a landscape?

... More

Thursday, September 27, 2018

And another Mexican visits the lab

Visiting PhD student Marisela Martínez Ruíz is spending 3 months in the lab to hone her landscape ecology know-how. Marisela works on raptors (birds of prey). During her MSc Marisela studied forest falcons in the rain forest. For her PhD she moved to the dry forest of western Mexico where she is studying habitat... More

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Lauren Hepburn’s work highlighted

In her MSc research Lauren Hepburn found the most amazing thing - if our neighbourhood has more bird species in it, we like it better, *even though we are not consciously aware of the birds*! I guess this means urban planners could surreptitiously improve peoples' happiness by taking measures to increase bird diversity in... More

Monday, May 28, 2018

Lauren Moretto finalist in 3-minute thesis competition

Lauren Moretto, MSc graduate at this spring's convocation, was a finalist in Carleton's 3 minute thesis competition. She did an incredible job of explaining 2 years of her life in 3 minutes to a general audience. Batman helped. You can see Lauren in action here:... More

Monday, May 28, 2018

Scientist from Mexico spending 6 months in the lab

Dr. Victor Arroyo-Rodriguez, a professor from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, is spending 6 months in the lab during his sabbatical. Victor works on the impact of land-use change on tropical biodiversity (both plants and animals) across different spatial scales.  ... More

Monday, March 5, 2018

A year in publications – 2017

Last year the Fahrig lab published 11 journal articles on landscape effects on birds, beetles, mammals, and amphibians. Here are some of our results. Habitat fragmentation, independent of habitat loss, generally has no effect or a positive effect on species. The habitat amount hypothesis is supported for European forest beetles and South American... More

Friday, October 13, 2017

Two international researchers spending a year in the lab

This year we have two international researchers spending the whole year with us. Our Brazilian connection continues with Dr. Eliana Cazetta, a Professor from Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Bahia, Brazil. Eliana and her students study biodiversity patterns and processes in human-modified landscapes. She joins the lab for a sabbatical year,... More

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Lab spring camping June 2-4

Why do we always go camping at the end of May? a) we're doing a research project on black flies b) we need to do actual field work in the summer c) we want the whole lake to ourselves d) the summer is too hot e) fish, hungry after a long winter, nibble at... More

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Lab represented at CSEE

Two lab members - postdoc Amanda Martin and MSc student Andrew Moraga - gave talks at the most recent meeting of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution in Victoria BC. Amanda's talk was on her research showing that more dispersive species can be at *greater* risk than sedentary species from landscape change. Andrew... More

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Forty years of bias in habitat fragmentation research

Why do most conservation biologists and practitioners think that a single large habitat patch has higher conservation value than a number of small patches totaling the same area as the single large patch, when the opposite is actually true? Find out in this upcoming book chapter:... More

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Jasper to Ushuaia in just 16 months

After only 16 months Gen and partner Michel made it all the way from Jasper National Park (Canada) to Ushuaia (Argentina) ON THEIR BICYCLES. Gen will be back in the lab this Friday! Gen and Michel at the finish line. What thighs! Carleton PR did a nice story on Gen's adventure. Read it here:... More

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Evidence Against the Habitat Amount Hypothesis?

Nick Haddad et al. just published a paper in Ecography claiming to show strong evidence against the habitat amount hypothesis. In it they thank Lenore for comments on an earlier draft. Those comments are posted on the Ecography blog here: http://www.ecography.org/blog/comment-haddad-experimental-evidence-does-not-support-habitat-amount-hypothesis... More

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

CBC Radio Talks Habitat Fragmentation

Want to hear Lenore try to explain habitat fragmentation effects to Ottawa morning commuters? Listen to this:... More

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

American biologists: in defense of science

From three American biology professors:   Governmental scientists employed at a subset of agencies have been forbidden from presenting their findings to the public. We have drafted the following response for distribution, and encourage other scientists to post it to their websites, when feasible. Graham Coop Professor of Evolution and Ecology... More

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

South America, Secret Santa, Sustainable Ag, Siam Kitchen, and Adiós

December was a busy time in the lab. The month opened with the Landscape Ecology Latin American Congress in Temuco, Chile. GLEL-ers Fernanda Teixeira, Gen Perkins, Sandra Martins de Freitas, and Ludmila Rattis came from various corners of the western hemisphere to re-connect with each other and to meet researchers from 15 Latin American... More

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

New review shows most effects of fragmentation per se are positive

Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 2017 will publish a new review of effects of fragmentation per se. Surprisingly this review shows that, when significant, effects of habitat fragmentation independent of habitat loss are more likely to be positive than negative. Read the pre-print here:... More

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Royal Society of Canada inducts a landscape ecologist

This November, Lenore will be inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Carleton's PR people have done a great job highlighting this historic event. See: And also: Not to mention: http://science.carleton.ca/node/149... More

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Five new MSc students join the lab

This fall the lab welcomes five new MSc students! Claire Farrell will study how the spatial pattern of clearcutting affects the distribution of Whip-poor-wills and Nighthawks. Kellie Heney will compare the success rate of turtles nesting along roads vs. away from roads. Lauren Hepburn will study the relationship between environmental variables and... More

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