Our lab investigates the forces enabling the maintenance, and governing the distribution, of biological diversity contemporarily and historically. Some of our work aims to use such information to better predict how biodiversity will change in the face of global changes. We are inclusive and diverse, we work on a variety of systems, but we have a slight preference for ants.
Forest ecosystems cover 30% of the world’s land surface, but historically covered as much as 50%. By storing 80% of the global plant carbon pool, forest ecosystems play a central role in regulating global climate. Boreal forests alone cover 11%
With rapid climate change, we expect species to shift their geographic distribution. Possible future scenarios include geographic range expansion, range contractions as well as local extirpation and species-wide extinctions. Which of these scenarios is more likely will vary among species,
We are interested in developing models and conducting experiments enabling us to quantify the relative and interactive influence of multiple processes operating across spatial scales to shape the structure of local communities. The composition and diversity of species we observe
Biogeographic regions and species pools are related concepts with important applications to community ecology, biogeography, macro-evolution and conservation biology. Biogeographic regions are biological units that exhibit dissimilarities in species assemblages between them, while they contain similar assemblages within them. They
