{"id":3669,"date":"2016-09-19T18:41:09","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T22:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=3669"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:51:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:51:38","slug":"research-royalty","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/research-royalty\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Royalty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Research Royalty\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

At first glance, distinguished Carleton researchers Lenore Fahrig<\/a> and Donald Beecher<\/a> appear to have little in common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s a biologist who studies the effects of landscape structure on biodiversity and wildlife populations. He\u2019s an English scholar who specializes in centuries-old prose and drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But both Fahrig and Beecher, who were elected into the Royal Society of Canada<\/a> in early September, are driven by an extremely wide-ranging curiosity \u2014 and both have become experts in their respective disciplines while drawing inspiration from external influences and ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have to be open-minded and be able to step back and notice things that you might not otherwise see,\u201d says Fahrig, who, along with Carleton Prof. Emeritus Gray Merriam<\/a>, is credited with introducing the concept of habitat connectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re doing a project, you think it\u2019s about something, and then you see something unexpected and the research changes direction. That\u2019s what keeps this work exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pioneers in the field
of landscape ecology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fahrig first came to Carleton in 1981 to do a master\u2019s degree with Merriam, Canada\u2019s preeminent landscape ecologist and one of the founders of the field. They used the term \u201chabitat connectivity\u201d in a co-authored paper published in 1985, part of her research that concluded mice populations have a better chance of surviving if they live in patches of forest that are linked together by hedgerows than if they live in habitat isolated by farm fields or urban development.<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image image=”3690″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fahrig, whose work combines simulation modelling and field study, shifted to butterflies while doing a PhD at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThe butterflies I studied didn\u2019t use habitat corridors,\u201d she says. \u201cI realized I couldn\u2019t take one type of population model and slap it onto everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

While doing a post-doc in Virginia, Fahrig switched species again and started looking at coastal dune plants. \u201cYou don\u2019t necessarily want to become an expert on one particular taxonomic group of organisms. It\u2019s good to be aware of a range of populations, and of different ways of viewing spatial landscape patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following her post-doc, Fahrig worked in Newfoundland for two years as a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, using existing data on cod and redfish to do more population modelling, then joined Merriam in Carleton\u2019s biology department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carleton lab explores impacts
of roads on wildlife<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Her lab<\/a>, which usually includes 10 or so graduate students and a post-doc or two, has evolved over the years, developing an expertise in the effects of human activities such as road networks and farmland patterning on wildlife populations, as well as mitigation measures to limit negative impacts on species.<\/p>\n\n\n

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But some things have remained constant, including the weekly lab discussions that Merriam had started decades earlier.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Fifteen to 20 people generally show up for these conversations, which are open to anybody from the community. \u201cIt\u2019s good for graduate students to be interacting with different types of people,\u201d says Fahrig, noting that government researchers often attend, \u201cso we don\u2019t get lost in our own specific projects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Illustrating this point, Fahrig is currently working on a paper that could overturn conventional thinking about habitat conservation. Our default is to believe that a couple of large chunks of land will support wildlife populations better than the same volume of habitat dispersed into many smaller parcels. But after working on a major review of landscape ecology literature, she argues that the opposite is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, says Fahrig, it\u2019s not the spatial distribution of habitat that matters \u2014 the total volume is much more significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Celebrating 50 years at Carleton<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beecher, who will celebrate his 50th year at Carleton in 2017, has a dizzyingly diverse list of interests: beyond early English prose fiction and Renaissance drama, he explores folklore and looks at literature through the lens of cognitive science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His most recent published book, Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds: Cognitive Science and the Literature of the Renaissance<\/em><\/a>, \u201ctouches upon cognitive definitions of memory, the self, suspense, analogy, the psychology of conversion, laughter, crying, and the evolutionary origins of certain of the most basic aspects of our natures, without discounting their cultural and social shaping.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image image=”3689″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beecher\u2019s interest in this area began about a dozen years ago, when he picked up one of his daughter\u2019s psychology books, modern philosopher Daniel Dennett\u2019s meditation on the meaning of consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re aware of ourselves thinking,\u201d says Beecher, \u201cand we make sense of the world by putting ourselves at the centre of our own narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This idea, he realized, has a relevance when one looks at the way people respond to literary texts. \u201cWe process fictional characters and real people in a different way, but we see both as human beings. For readers, fictional characters do exist, because our brains don\u2019t have any other capacity for processing them. We worry about them and we cry over them \u2014 they\u2019re not just words on a page.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analyzing our response to these characters offers insight into how our minds work \u2014 how we make decisions, how we make mistakes \u2014 and, ultimately, opens a window into human nature (or, as Beecher says, \u201cthe phylogenetic dimensions of the human condition\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beecher\u2019s research and writing on this subject, which will take him to conferences in Taiwan, Australia, Los Angeles and Chicago over the next seven months, is informed by conversations with Carleton faculty members in other fields, including cognitive scientist Jim Davies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s vital,\u201d Beecher says about such cross-pollination. \u201cThis is the way we make the most interesting steps forward, by bringing different types of research together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carleton Renaissance scholar
is a Renaissance man<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In addition to this pursuit, Beecher has also translated the lost Gian Lorenzo Bernini play The Impresario<\/em> from Italian into English for performances at Princeton University, the National Gallery of Canada and Carleton\u2019s Architecture Building; he has written, edited and contributed to dozens of anthologies and scholarly papers; he has released three musical recordings featuring his performance on viola da gamba; and he has displayed his collection of shells from around the world at the MacOdrum Library.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019m a very nervous individual,\u201d he says. \u201cI get bored quickly, so I usually have three or four different projects on the go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Beecher is looking forward to meeting and mingling with fellow members of the Royal Society of Canada when he and Fahrig are formally inducted<\/a> in mid-November. It represents another opportunity to be engaged in \u201cpublic intellectual discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Fahrig, joining the society is a chance to follow a new path without knowing where it might lead. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first glance, distinguished Carleton researchers Lenore Fahrig and Donald Beecher appear to have little in common. She\u2019s a biologist who studies the effects of landscape structure on biodiversity and wildlife populations. He\u2019s an English scholar who specializes in centuries-old prose and drama. But both Fahrig and Beecher, who were elected into the Royal Society […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[1920],"class_list":["post-3669","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/3669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/3669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97559,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/3669\/revisions\/97559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=3669"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=3669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}