ABOUT ME
In my work as a professor at UQAT, I am interested in better understanding how animals will respond to human disturbance. When we modify their environment, animals can either move, change to suit this new environment, evolve to fit in this new environment or die out. change in traits can therefore play an important role in the viability of populations. I study the interplay between the environment, traits, and fitness. I am interested in all sorts of traits: morphological, behavioral, phenological, and physiological.
​​During my postdocs, I studied the life history and demography of Svalbard reindeer and tree swallows. Using data from long-term monitoring, I investigated the importance of past and current environments in shaping phenotypes, reproduction, survival and fitness.
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​I did my Ph.D. under the supervision of Fanie Pelletier in the Evolutionary Demography and Conservation Lab at the Université de Sherbrooke. I study what happens at the intersection of population dynamics, evolution and demography. I investigate these questions using long-term individual-based monitoring like the population of bighorn sheep which has been studied since 1972. Given the huge impact humans have on wildlife, understanding how ecology, evolution and population dynamics are all interlinked is crucial for better long-term management.
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My M.Sc. (also with Fanie Pelletier) was more focused on physiology. I studied the interplay between immunity and ecology in tree swallow, a passerine bird that has been declining in southern Québec for some time. Intensification of agricultural practices may play a role in this decline. I looked at how these changes in farming practices and in climate influenced the immune responses of swallows and how it modulated the correlations between different components of the immune system.
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RESEARCH INTERESTS
Population Dynamics
What causes population to grow, decline or stay stable? How important is density dependence? what is it's shape? What are the sources and mechanism of lagged response?
Phenotypic response to human perturbation
Human is probably the dominant source of environmental change. In the face of such rapid change, species must either adapt, move or die. How can phenotypic plasticity help species cope with these environmental changes ? How adaptive are these changes and what limits them ?
Evolution
How are we playing a role in the evolution of species? Are we imposing new "un-natural" selection pressures on wildlife? Will animals respond to this new selection? How will that affect population dynamics?
ACADEMIC HISTORY
Professor
2022 - now : UQAT
PostDoc
2021 - 2021: Université Laval
2020 - 2021: Université de Sherbrooke
​2017 - 2021: Norwegian University of Life Science
Ph.D. in biology​
2013 - 2017: Université de Sherbrooke
M.Sc. in biology
2010 - 2012: Université de Sherbrooke
B.Sc. in biology
2005 - 2009: Université de Québec à Montréal
Conservation
How do we translate fundamental knowledge of population dynamics and evolutionary biology into management action?