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Come to biology by way of an undergraduate in mathematical physics, I believe that ecology is now where physics was two centuries ago. I'm interested in applying quantitative tools to ecological questions, particularly those associated with where the individual meets ecology. I began as an Assistant Professor in Natural Resource Sciences at McGill in January 2015. Photo by Kerry Woo.
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PrincipAL investigator
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STUDENTS
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Angelika Aleksieva MSc (started Sept 2015)
Curiosity and birdwatching have led me to the world of Ornithology. I study the correlation between the age of black-legged kittiwakes and the pentosidine levels in their foot webbings. Fortunately for me, this research includes both the excitement of the field and the comfort of the laboratory work. 
Emile Brisson-Curadeau MSc (started Sept 2016)
When you have ornithology as a passion, what better place to enjoy it than in the ever-impressive Arctic environment? That is the reason why I chose to do my MSc on Thick-billed Murres... and because... you know, who doesn't want to see polar bears? Coats Island will be my study area for the next two years, where we will use cutting-edge technologies to record all the facets of those fascinating diving birds. 
Amélie Fontaine PhD (started Jan 2017)
Amélie did her MSc at UQAM (supervised by Jean-François Giroux), studying population dynamics of waterfowl. Switching from an abundant bird population to threatened mammal populations, Amélie will bring her knowledge on population dynamics, conservation and management to help to increase our understanding of bat populations of Quebec. Co-supervised by Anouk Simard (Minister of Forests, Wildlife and Parks), this PhD project will examine aspects related to demography, reproductive success, and reproductive energetic constraints facing Myotis species in Quebec with a pinch of citizen science. 
Esteban Góngora MSc (started Sept 2016)
Esteban joins us from Bogotá, Colombia after completing his undergrad at Universidad de los Andes with a double major in biology and microbiology. He will be co-supervised by Lyle Whyte (McGill), and he will work on various aspects of the relationships occurring between birds and their microbiome with a special focus to bird’s diet preferences and differential levels of mercury present on bird tissues. 
Thomas Lazarus PhD (started Sept 2015)
Thomas joins us from Alsace, France. He brings an expertise in modelling the distribution of path lengths in animal movement, which he has previously used to study ants and seabirds. He is funded via MITACS and CREATE scholarships and his dissertation (co-supervisor: Grant Gilchrist) will involve deciphering why and how breeding murres move in the Canadian Arctic, and how that might intersect with shipping of iron ore from the Baffinlands mine. Allison Patterson PhD (started Sept 2016) Allison did her MSc at the Roby lab studying feather CORT and movement of Caspian Terns. She has spent several years as a field technician studying seabirds, seaducks, shorebirds and songbirds in the Arctic, Texas, BC, Washington and the Alaskan Panhandle. She is funded via MITACS and CREATE scholarships and her dissertation (co-supervisor: Grant Gilchrist) will examine carry-over effects and linkages throughout the annual cycle in thick-billed murres equipped with year-round depth, light and acceleration loggers. She is particularly interested in times and locations when populations are particularly vulnerable to oil pollution. 
Anita Morales MSc (started Sept 2017)
Ana completed her undergrad at McGill with a Major in Environmental Biology. She spent the next two years doing field work in Ecuador, studying endemic land birds in Galapagos and hummingbird physiology in the Andean highlands. Her MSc thesis is co-supervised by Barbara Frei from the McGill Bird Observatory and she will be studying the migration and stopover ecology of moult migrant Swainson’s thrushes in Montreal using the Motus Wildlife Tracking System. 
Rebecca McCabe PhD (started Sept 2017)
Rebecca joins us from Pennsylvania, where she completed her MSc in Biology at East Stroudsburg University studying the nesting ecology of broad-winged hawks. Rebecca is funded via the CREATE scholarship and is co-supervised by Jean-François Therrien (Hawk Mountain Sanctuary). Her PhD work will assess the movements, habitat use, and habitat selection of irruptive snowy owls. 
Shannon Whelan PhD (to start Sept 2017)
Shannon completed her MSc at uOttawa (co-advised by Julie Morand-Ferron and Ryan Norris), studying how temperature influences timing of breeding and reproductive success of grey jays. Her PhD work will examine individual variation in foraging behaviour in two Arctic seabirds: black-legged kittiwakes and thick-billed murres. She is using GPS-accelerometers to “spy” on the daily activities of these birds in order to see how they respond to environmental change. She is working as a research technician here until starting a PhD in September. 
Natalie Thimot MSc (started Sept 2015)
Natalie joins us from Nova Scotia, after doing her undergrad at Universite Sainte-Anne and Dalhousie. She is co-supervised by Rodger Titman (McGill) and Shawn Craik (Universite Sainte-Anne), and is examining correlates of conspecific brood parasitism in red-breasted mergansers in New Brunswick. 
Francis Van Oordt PhD (started Sept 2017)
Francis is joining our lab from Lima, Peru. He has a degree in biology from Universidad Nacional Agraria, La Molina and a master’s from California State University, Northridge where he did research on ecomorphology of boobies in the Pacific. He has worked for several years in the Peruvian Marine Research Institute on top predator ecology along the whole Peruvian coast. He has also been an instructor in science and ecology courses in Peru for Broward College. Francis will work on his PhD doing research on endemic seabirds in Peru (cormorants, diving petrels) trying to understand their foraging patterns and diet composition changes associated to environmental disturbances along the Upwelling Humboldt Current System. 
Erin Brown BSc (started Jan 2017)
Erin is excited to be completing an undergraduate degree in environmental biology with a specialization in wildlife. After having spent the last two summers tree planting, she is happy to be out of the woods and learning about a new environment. For her honours thesis she will be using multiple data sets provided by Dr. George Divoky of Cooper's Island, Alaska. She will be study the energetics of prey switching by black guillemots, hoping to quantify the depth and time at which this event occurs. 
Katelyn Depot BSc (started Sept 2017)
Katelyn is currently completing her undergraduate degree in Environmental Biology (Wildlife Biology Specialization) at McGill. She spent part of the summer of 2017 working with seabirds in Maine as a research assistant for the National Audubon Society's Project Puffin, and plans to return next summer. For her senior research project, she is using data collected by Project Puffin to look for relationships between puffin diet composition and changing fish communities in the Gulf of Maine. 
Kristen Lalla Honours project, McGill School of the Environment (started Sept 2017)
I'm an Environment (Biodiversity and Conservation) student with a lifelong passion for birds. During summer 2017, I was on Middleton Island, Alaska, studying Black-legged Kittiwakes. I'm looking at age-related differences in foraging behaviour and muscle regeneration, specifically, satellite cells. 
Megan Phillips BSc (started Jan 2017)
Megan is currently completing her undergraduate degree in environmental biology, specializing in wildlife biology at McGill. Her honours thesis is co-supervised by Barbara Frei of the McGill Bird Observatory and aims to optimize the placement of the MOTUS tower to detect bird migration of passerine species. She hopes this experience will help her spread her wings so that she can migrate to her next destination. 
Eric Ste Marie BSc (started Sep 2017)
Eric is an undergraduate student who is completing his final year at McGill in Environmental Biology (Wildlife specialization). After having spent July 2017 doing fieldwork in East Greenland, he is doing his Honour's thesis in our lab on the topic of seabird energetics. His project involves combining accelerometer data and estimates of daily energy expenditure to determine the costs of diving and flying in dovekies. |
COLLABORATORS
Past students |
2015. Juliana Balluffi-Fry (Undergrad project) completed an undergraduate research project on the diversity of birds at Kenauk Nature Reserve, along the Ottawa River north of Montreal. Following a field semester in Panama, she is now doing an Honours thesis looking at mammal diversity at Kenauk. 2016. Catherine Jarjour (Honours project, Environmental Biology) cured her Irritable Owl Syndrome by completing an Honours thesis on temporal trends in bird abundance at the McGill Bird Observatory. She is starting a MSc thesis at UOttawa with Jule Marond-Ferron. 2016. Emma Nip (Undergrad project) completed an undergraduate research project on mass variation in black-capped chickadees at the McGill Bird Observatory. She is now doing a MSc in Animal BioSciences at Guelph studying animal welfare with Georgia Mason. 2016. Catherine Villeneuve (Honours thesis, Environmental Biology) Catherine used her ninja karate skills to attack a mound of data collected on thick-billed murres at Coats Island. She examined different ways of automatically converting accelerometer data into ethograms based on validated (videotaped) data. 2017. Amanda Smith-Stasinopolous (Undergrad project) After completing an internship volunteering with a sea turtle conservation organisation in Greece this past summer, Amanda realised that she needed more a hands-on experience with field work data analysis. She evaluated the massive data set on at-sea behaviours of black-legged kittiwakes from the Middleton, Alaska field site to examine the fascinating relationship between environmental change and animal behaviour. 
2017. Casey Leung (Honours thesis, Life Sciences) Casey is an aspiring vet whose thesis was co-supervised by Barbara Frei (Director, McGill Bird Observatory). She tested the utility of point-of-care devices to measure the health of wild songbirds, especially wintering/late migrating juncos, American Tree Sparrows, goldfinches, chickadees, House Finches and robins.
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M
I CONSIDER ANYONE I'VE CO-AUTHORED A MANUSCRIPT WITH A COLLABORATOR, BUT THESE ARE A FEW PEOPLE THAT I HAVE WORKED CLOSELY WITH RECENTLY:
JOEL BETY, UNIVERSITY DE QUEBEC A RIMOUSKI, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS (COLLABORATOR ON SEVERAL GRANTS)
DAVID BIRD, MCGILL UNIVERSITY, APPLICATIONS OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES TO WILDLIFE BIOLOGY (CO-PI ON A MURRE FUND AND MOLSON FUND GRANT)
BIRGIT BRAUNE, ENVIRONMENT CANADA, CONTAMINANTS IN ARCTIC SEABIRDS (CO-APPLICANT ON TWO NCP GRANTS)
GEORGE DIVOKY, FRIENDS OF COOPER ISLAND, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS (CO-SUPERVISOR OF ERIN BROWN)
JOHN ELLIOTT, ENVIRONMENT CANADA, CONTAMINANTS IN PACIFIC SEABIRDS
KIM FERNIE, ENVIRONMENT CANADA, CONTAMINANTS IN ARCTIC SEABIRDS (CO-PI ON TWO NCP GRANTS)
JEROME FORT, CENTRE NATIONAL DES RECHERCHES SCIENTIFIQUES, CONTAMINANTS IN ARCTIC SEABIRDS (ARCTOX)
MARIE-JOSEE FORTIN, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, ADAPTATION OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS TO AN ICE-FREE SUMMER (CO-PI ON NSERC STRATEGIC GRANT)
BARBARA FREI, MCGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY, MOVEMENT OF SONGBIRDS ALONG AN URBAN GRADIENT (CO-SUPERVISOR OF LUKE CURRIN AND SEVERAL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS)
VICKI FRIESEN, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, ADAPTATION OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS TO AN ICE-FREE SUMMER (PI ON NSERC STRATEGIC GRANT)
TONY GASTON, ENVIRONMENT CANADA, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS
GRANT GILCHRIST, ENVIRONMENT CANADA, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS (PI ON SEVERAL GRANTS, CO-SUPERVISOR OF THOMAS LAZARUS AND ALLISON PATTERSON)
DAVID GREMILLET, CENTRE NATIONAL DES RECHERCHES SCIENTIFIQUES, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS
MELANIE GUIGUENO, MCGILL UNIVERSITY
SCOTT HATCH, INSTITUTE FOR SEABIRD RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF SUB-ARCTIC SEABIRDS
JESSICA HEAD, MCGILL UNIVERSITY, CONTAMINANTS IN ARCTIC SEABIRDS (CO-PI ON TWO NCP GRANTS)
OLIVER LOVE, UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS (COLLABORATOR ON SEVERAL GRANTS)
MARK MALLORY, ACADIA, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS (COLLABORATOR ON SEVERAL GRANTS)
YAN ROPERT-COUDERT, CENTRE NATIONAL DES RECHERCHES SCIENTIFIQUES, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS (PI ON BNP-PARABIS GRANT)
CHRISTINA SEMENIUK, UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF ARCTIC SEABIRDS (COLLABORATOR ON SEVERAL GRANTS)
JEAN-FRANCOIS THERRIEN, HAWK MOUNTAIN, MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF SNOWY OWLS (CO-SUPERVISOR OF REBECCA MCCABE)
RODGER TITMAN, MCGILL BIRD OBSERVATORY, MOVEMENT OF SONGBIRDS ALONG AN URBAN GRADIENT & BROOD PARASITISM IN MERGANSERS (CO-SUPERVISOR OF NATALIE THIMOT)
JASON TREBERG, UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA, AGEING IN SEABIRDS
FRANCOIS VEZINA, UNIVERSITY DE QUEBEC A RIMOUSKI, USE OF THYROID HORMONES AS A PROXY FOR BMR (CO-PI ON QCBS SEED GRANT)