Andrew Gonzalez

Professor | Liber Ero Chair in Conservation Biology | Killam Fellow
Founding director of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science

Andy obtained his PhD (1998) at Silwood Park (Imperial College) where he worked with John Lawton on the causes and consequences of extinction. He then did a brief postdoc with Michel Loreau and then spent four years as an assistant professor at the University of Paris VI, before moving to McGill University as an Associate Professor in 2003. Major research interests include: 1) biodiversity loss as a form of global change, 2) rapid evolution and ecosystem recovery, and 3) links between biodiversity change, sustainability and human wellbeing. He recently spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the sixth mass extinction and resilient ecosystems for urban sustainability.

​Post Doctoral Researchers

Vincent Fugère is interested in applied eco-evolutionary dynamics in freshwater ecosystems. He has completed his PhD under the supervision of Lauren Chapman, studying impacts of land use on East African streams. Vincent is now running the first set of experiments using the Large Experimental Array of Ponds (LEAP) at Gault Nature Reserve, testing evolutionary/community rescue in metacommunities exposed to multiple stressors associated with agricultural intensification.

Current Graduate Students

Chloe Debyser (M.Sc, starting September, 2016) Impacts of tropical forest fragmentation on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Katie Millette (PhD, cosupervised with Melania Cristescu): Evolution in contaminated environments: selection, gene flow, and the maintenance of Daphnia populations exposed to multiple stressors

Alessandra Loria (PhD, cosupervised with Melania Cristescu) The ecological and evolutionary interplay between pollution and biodiversity

Catalina Gomez (PhD, cosupervised with Hector Guzman, STRI in Panama): The dynamics of coral diversity and environmental change in the East Pacific.

Starting in the Fall/Winter:

Charles Bazerghi (MSc)

Kristina Krebs (PhD, co-supervised with Graham Bell)

David Rivest (PhD)

Current Undergraduate Students

Ariel Greiner: NSERC summer student. The dynamics of extinction debt in spatially explicit metacommunities.

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Research Assistants

Helen Elina: Lab management

Maria Dumitru: GIS and data analysis

Lab Alumni

Post doc

Zoë Lindo (now Assistant Professor at Uni. Western Ontario).

Bronwyn Rayfield (post doc at Uni. of Quebec at Outaouais and environmental consultant)

Cecile Albert (now CNRS researcher, Aix en Provence)

Jerome Dupras (now professor at Uni. of Quebec at Outaouais)

PhD
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Sarah Leo (PhD, 2016)

Michael Pedruski (PhD, 2015)

Patrick Thompson (PhD, 2015): now Killam Post doc at UBC

Edward Wong (PhD, 2015): now post doc at Princeton U.

Matthew Mitchell (PhD; now post doc UBC)

Jonathan Whiteley (PhD, now Wildlife biologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ottawa)

Pradeep Pillai (PhD; now post doc at NorthEastern Uni.)

Georgina (Xoxo) O'Farrill (PhD; now at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Montreal).

Tariq Gardezi (PhD)

Nirmala Massin (PhD, Chargée de mission, UPMC, Paris)

Blandine Descamps-Julien (PhD, Chef de projet - Recherche et Développement, Université d'Aix-Marseille)

MSc

Shaun Turney (MSc, now PhD McGill University)

Carly Ziter (MSc, now PhD Wisconsin)

Robby Marotte (MSc, now PhD Trent University)

Kyle Martins (MSc, research assistant, McGill University)

Tim Holland (MSc, now PhD at McGill University)

Colin Fontaine (DEA, now CNRS, Mueseum, National D'Histoire Naturelle, Paris)

Delphine Saudo (DEA)