People

Team

Lab in September 2022. Missing from picture: Nico, Marianne, Sarah B. and HK

Principle Investigator

Dr. Heather Kharouba
Associate Professor
Department of Biology

Academic Experience
NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow
Center for Population Biology Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Davis

Education
PhD, University of British Columbia
MSc, University of Ottawa
BSc, University of Ottawa

Postdocs

Dr. Nico Muñoz
Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-)
nico_munoz[at]sfu.ca

Nico is interested in the biological determinants of climate change vulnerability and climate-informed conservation. In his postdoctoral research, he is investigating the importance of microrefugia and the potential for microclimatic buffers against climate change to be integrated within networks of protected areas. This work is being co-supervised with Dr. Ilona Naujokaitis-Lewis (Environment and Climate Change Canada) and Dr. Christina Davy (Carleton University).

Dr. Zoe Panchen
Mitacs Postdoctoral Fellow (2021-)
zpanche2[at]uottawa.ca

Zoe is a botanist and plant ecologist researching how plants and plant communities respond to climate change. She has a special interest in Arctic plant phenology. Her Mitacs postdoctoral project is a collaboration between the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Universities of Ottawa and British Columbia. The project uses herbarium specimens to investigate the evolutionary and life history trait patterns in Arctic plant phenological responses to climate change.

Grad students

Sarah Dolson
PhD candidate (2019-)
sdols079[at]uottawa[dot]ca

Sarah is interested in macroecological questions related to species diversity and climate change. Specifically, how species ranges and traits vary with climate currently and possibly in the future. She hopes to investigates these areas using ecological gradients, focusing on elevational and latitudinal changes in insect communities.

Spencer Karau
MSc candidate (2022-)
Co-supervised by Dr. Tyler Smith at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
skara076[at]uottawa[dot]ca

Spencer is interested in the application of data science techniques to questions about climate change, speficially in the context of how climate change has impacted species' distributions and interactions. He will be modelling, visualizing, and analyzing the impacts of weeds and invasive species on the distribution of native plants in the Canadian agricultural sector.

Katherine Peel
MSc candidate (2022-)
kpeel076[at]uottawa[dot]ca

Katherine is interested in the protection of species from the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Previously, she explored the body size responses to climate change of two butterfly species (Lysandra coridon and Polyommatus icarus) in Southern England and considered the implications on migration, feeding, and mating. Her current project aims to separate the direct, indirect, and combined effects of warming temperatures on the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and its obligate host plant, milkweed (Asclepias spp.). She hopes that the results of this project will help inform conservation practices of the newly endangered monarch butterfly.

Manon Veselosvky
MSc student (2022-)
Co-supervised by Greg Mitchell at Environment and Climate Change Canada
mvese092[at]uottawa[dot]ca

Manon is interested in conservation and the effects of climate change on species interactions. She is seeking to identify which nectar sources provide the greatest energy benefit to the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) to help inform monarch habitat restoration.

Honours students

Nicole Kester
Honours student (2022-2023)
Co-supervised by Dr. Tyler Smith at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Nicole is interested in invasive species and the impacts of climate change on their spread. For her honours project, she will be developing species distribution models for dog-strangling vine (Vincetoxicum rossicum) to evaluate its potential range across North America, and how this range could change in response to different climate scenarios.

Jenna Boomhower
Honours student (2022-2023)

Jenna is interested in evaluating the nutritional role of non-native plants in the nectar diet of monarch butterflies.

Lab alumni

Sarah Bell
Co-supervised by Nico Munoz
Honours student (2022-2023)

Thesis: Identifying potential sites of forest microrefugia for Ontario's terrestrial species at risk.

Marianne Busque
Co-supervised by Zoe Panchen
Honours student (2022-2023)

Thesis: Temporal and spatial variations in the flowering times of Arctic Ranunculaceae species.

Zoe Pekos
Honours student (2022-2023)

Thesis: The role of non-native plants in the nectar diet of a native butterfly community.

Maisy Roach-Krajewski
MSc student (2020-2023)
Co-supervised by Tyler Smith at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Thesis: Using invasion history to quantify equilibrium in over 250 invasive plant species in North America.

Dr. Stephanie Rivest
PhD student (2016-2022)

Thesis: Non-native species and urbanization in the context of butterfly communities.

Hannah Keefe
MSc student (2020-2022)

Thesis: The role of growing degree-days in explaining Lepidoptera species distributions at broad scales.

Katherine Peel
Honours student 2021-2022

Thesis: Body size responses to climate change of two butterfly species in Southern England.

Devin Empey
Honours student 2021-2022

Thesis: The impact of experimental warming on the growth and development of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).

Dr. Felipe Dargent
NSERC Banting Fellow (2018-2020)
Felipe worked on how land-use changes influence the diversity of arthropod communities living on milkweed, and how this, in turn, affects monarch butterfly infections with a protist parasite (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha). He is now a postdoc with Clément Bataille. For more info, see Felipe's personal webpage

Sharla Foster
MSc candidate (2018-2021) Co-supervised by Tyler Smith (Agriculture Canada)
Thesis: Quantifying the expansion of an invasive plant species, Dog-strangling Vine (Vincetoxicum rossicum), in environmental and geographic space over the past 130 years.

Sydney Gilmour
MSc student (2018-2021)
Thesis: The effect of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) quality on monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) oviposition preference and larval performance.

Samantha Beesley
MSc in Environmental Sustainability (2019-2021)
Thesis: Is climate change a threat to Canadian Species at Risk? A case study on the threat of climate change to Atlantic Canadian Species at Risk.

Darby Hooper
Honours student 2020-2021
Thesis: The effect of urbanization on butterfly communities around Ottawa, ON & Montreal, QC.

Benoit Lalande
Honours student 2020-2021
Thesis: The impact of disturbance-tolerant plants on the diversity of arthropod communities across an urbanization gradient.

Philippe Tremblay
MSc student (2017-2019)
Thesis: The role of cold tolerance in the geographic distribution of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio cresphontes).

Samantha Lalonde
Honours student (2018-2019)
Thesis: Quantifying roadside decline and the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on common milkweed in the Ottawa region.

Alexa Ouellette
Honours student (2017-2018)
Thesis: A study of the key factors influencing the growth and geographic distribution of Zanthoxylum americanum.

Lab in September 2021.

Sharla's post MSc defence get-together. June 2021.

Lab in December 2020. COVID times!