Research

Research is driven by three overarching questions: 1) how did past climate changes affect biodiversity? 2) how might current and future environmental changes affect biodiversity? 3) how can biodiversity be conserved given current and future challenges? To address these questions, we integrate large climate and species distributions databases with descriptions of behavioural and physiological traits of species, molecular phylogenies, and the fossil record. Most research in the lab involves statistical analyses of ecological data, including data mining, bioclimatic modeling, and mathematical simulations, but large-scale experiments, including microcosm and mesocosm experiments, are also being used for testing models and theory on species distributions and species coexistence.