Understanding how ecological systems change is increasingly popular ecological science, says Guillaume Blanchet from the Département de Biologie, Faculté des Sciences at Université de Sherbrooke. But how do researchers study these changes?
In ecology, research mainly focuses on describing ecological systems and understanding why these systems are structured as they are. More recently, mostly because of climate change, ecologists have been increasingly interested in making predictions about how ecological systems change.
To be able to accurately describe, understand and predict where and at which moment a particular population or species can be found or how the number of individuals varies in abundance, it is necessary to have the right models.
This is where quantitative ecologists like myself get involved. Generally speaking, the research in my group aims at developing new ways to model complex biological systems. Specifically, in my research, I am interested in finding new ways to use ecological data to efficiently describe, understand, predict and manage biological systems.
From a modelling perspective, my team and I work in developing mathematical and statistical techniques to model ecological systems, with a focus on multivariate (e.g. to account for multiple species at once) and spatiotemporal models (e.g. to account for seasonality or the ability of individual of a species to disperse across space).
Methodological developments within a spectrum of ecological systems
Because my work is mainly focused on methodological developments, I have worked on a broad range of ecological systems, a particularity typical of quantitative ecologists. For example, I have been involved in projects in vegetation ecology where the interest was to understand the main factors structuring plants in the Chihuahua deserts in New Mexico (USA), tree of the boreal forests of Northern Alberta and of the tropical forest of the southwest of China and flowering plants of Greenland.
I have also worked on large terrestrial vertebrates, including birds (in Finland and Canada) and mammals like the bighorn sheep in Canada and the lion in Africa, as well as terrestrial invertebrates, including forest beetles, mosquitoes and leafminers. In addition, I also work on project in freshwater and marine ecosystems where the focus was to describe, understand and propose new management ideas on fish, corals or invertebrates in locations as far apart as Italy, Canada, Japan and the Caribbean.
Although most of my work has focused on specific groups of large organisms (macroecological systems), I have also worked on microorganisms, such as the ones found on oak trees in Sweden and maple trees in Québec. Lastly, I have also been involved in studies focusing on how humans interact with nature, for example, through a socioecological perspective.
An ecological question
All projects in my research group have, as a starting point, an ecological question. Some of the questions I am interested in have general implications for ecology: Why are some species rare while others are common? How is bird migration affected by climate change? or What are the limits and biases of new data types (e.g. environmental DNA or laser imaging) for quantifying biodiversity?
I am also interested in questions more specific to a topic or a particular ecological system: Why is the bighorn sheep population of Ram Mountain (Alberta, Canada) not stable? How can we help better protect and conserve the Copper redhorse (an endangered fish that is known to reproduce solely in the Richelieu River in southern Québec, Canada)? Based on these questions, my team and I develop models specifically adapted to answer these ecological questions for a specific ecological system and thus move science forward.
When I develop these new models, I make the effort to implement them in software for others to use. Making my research, which sometimes becomes quite technical, more readily available and useful to other researchers.
A diverse ecological team
My research group gathers people from diverse backgrounds, but all have in common an interest in biodiversity modelling. Of course, my team comprises ecologists and conservation biologists, but it also includes microbiologists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists and informaticians. I believe it is by gathering people from a mixed background that paradigm-changing ideas are more likely to occur and move science forward.
In a nutshell, my interest lies in the development of new mathematical and statistical models and methods specifically designed to approach ecological questions that would be difficult or impossible to approach otherwise.
