Pillar 3
Biodiversity in Changing Communities
From species responses to ecological resilience
Ecological communities emerge from interactions among species, and those interactions depend on how individual organisms respond to their environment. Building on our studies of evolutionary history and organismal adaptation, we investigate how environmental change reorganizes ecological networks and determines community resilience.
Our long-term research program is establishing a genomic ecological observatory in Subarctic Canada, integrating evolutionary biology, organismal biology and ecology through biodiversity inventories, long-term monitoring and biodiversity genomics to understand how ecological communities are assembled, reorganized and sustained across biological scales, from species to ecosystems.
How do environmental change and unequal species responses reorganize ecological networks, and which interactions sustain resilient communities?
01
Churchill provides an exceptional natural system for studying ecological communities under rapid environmental change. Its short growing season, diverse pollinator assemblages and relatively simple ecosystems create an ideal living laboratory for understanding how biodiversity responds to a changing environment.
02
Species inventories alone cannot explain ecosystem function. We investigate how interactions among plants and pollinators assemble into ecological networks, and how these networks are reorganized as species respond differently to environmental change.
03
Our observatory combines standardized biodiversity surveys, molecular ecology, biodiversity genomics and long-term monitoring to reconstruct ecological interactions and build a permanent record of community change across years and decades.
04
The observatory is also a living classroom. Students gain hands-on experience spanning field ecology, biodiversity genomics, bioinformatics and ecological analysis, developing the interdisciplinary skills needed to address future biodiversity challenges.
05
Long-term ecological research depends upon lasting partnerships. By working with local communities, research organizations, citizen scientists and international collaborators, we are building an open observatory that supports biodiversity research, conservation and environmental stewardship for generations to come.
Long-term research direction
From network reorganization to community resilience
The long-term goal is to understand not simply whether ecological networks change, but what happens when they do.
-
Can other species compensate for lost interactions?
-
Can pollinators switch resources when flowering patterns change?
-
Which ecological functions are supported by multiple species, and which depend on vulnerable interactions?
Environmental change
Unequal species responses
Interaction gain/loss/rewiring
From genomes to ecosystems
Understanding ecological communities requires integrating knowledge across biological scales, from evolutionary history and organismal adaptation to ecological interactions and community resilience. The Churchill observatory provides the framework for connecting these perspectives into a unified understanding of biodiversity in a changing world.