Université du Québec à Rimouski
Postdoctoral fellow candidate
Supervisor: Dominique Gravel
Start: 2013-06-30
End: 2015-12-15
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Project

Towards landscape models integrating both vegetation and large herbivore population dynamics.
There is no doubt today that on-going environmental changes strongly influence biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. At the landscape scale, these changes need to be anticipated in order to adapt hunting plans, regulate forest management, and choose conservation strategies. Given the extent and time scale at which landscape dynamics occur, models are the preferred tools to understand and predict future biodiversity and ultimately advise managers. Landscape models usually focus on vegetation dynamics because of the structural role of vegetation, providing habitat and resources for other species. However, it is expected that complex biotic interactions between trophic levels might feed back on vegetation (e.g. ungulates through grazing) and that the whole network of ecological interactions is central to the maintenance of ecosystem properties and stability. The present project aims to develop new modelling tools to improve our understanding of the interactions between the vegetation and large herbivore populations in a global change context. Dynamic vegetation models and population models will be coupled at different spatial and temporal scales. The newly developed modelling tools will address the question of whether or not biotic interactions impact species distributions at a range of scales. In addition, we will focus on identifying the critical transitions between vegetation types and mechanisms that promote such transitions. The scale of interest will coincide with the scale at which conservation management takes place and the developments will be applied to practical conservation questions in Anticosti Island and elsewhere.

Keywords

landscape model, plant-ungulates interactions, ecosystem stability, Range shift, critical transitions, population dynamics, vegetation dynamics

Publications

1- Anticipating the spatio-temporal response of plant diversity and vegetation structure to climate and land use change in a protected area
Boulangeat, Isabelle, Damien Georges, Cédric Dentant, Richard Bonet, Jérémie Van Es, Sylvain Abdulhak, Niklaus E. Zimmermann, Wilfried Thuiller
2014 Ecography

2- FATE-HD: a spatially and temporally explicit integrated model for predicting vegetation structure and diversity at regional scale
Isabelle, Boulangeat, Georges Damien, Thuiller Wilfried
2014 Global Change Biology

3- Dispersal and species’ responses to climate change
Travis, Justin M. J., Maria Delgado, Greta Bocedi, Michel Baguette, Kamil Bartoń, Dries Bonte, Isabelle Boulangeat, Jenny A. Hodgson, Alexander Kubisch, Vincenzo Penteriani, Marjo Saastamoinen, Virginie M. Stevens, James M. Bullock
2013 Oikos

4- Consequences of climate change on the tree of life in Europe
Thuiller, Wilfried, Sébastien Lavergne, Cristina Roquet, Isabelle Boulangeat, Bruno Lafourcade, Miguel. B. Araujo
2011 Nature

5- Resolving Darwin’s naturalization conundrum: a quest for evidence
Thuiller, Wilfried, Laure Gallien, Isabelle Boulangeat, Francesco De Bello, Tamara Münkemüller, Cristina Roquet, Sébastien Lavergne
2010 Diversity and Distributions

6- Disentangling the drivers of metacommunity structure across spatial scales
Meynard, Christine N., Sébastien Lavergne, Isabelle Boulangeat, Luc Garraud, Jérémie Van Es, Nicolas Mouquet, Wilfried Thuiller,
2013 Journal of Biogeography

7- Predicting potential distributions of invasive species: where to go from here?
Gallien, Laure, Tamara Münkemüller, Cécile H. Albert, Isabelle Boulangeat, Wilfried Thuiller
2010 Diversity and Distributions

8- Improving plant functional groups for dynamic models of biodiversity: at the crossroads between functional and community ecology
Boulangeat, Isabelle, Pauline Philippe, Sylvain Abdulhak, Roland Douzet, Luc Garraud, Sébastien Lavergne, Sandra Lavorel, Jérémie Van Es, Pascal Vittoz, Wilfried Thuiller
2012 Global Change Biology

9- Niche breadth, rarity and ecological characteristics within a regional flora spanning large environmental gradients
Boulangeat, Isabelle, Sébastien Lavergne, Jérémie Van Es, Luc Garraud, Wilfried Thuiller
2012 Journal of Biogeography

10- Accounting for dispersal and biotic interactions to disentangle the drivers of species distributions and their abundances
Boulangeat, Isabelle, Dominique Gravel, Wilfried Thuiller
2012 Ecology Letters

11- Hierarchical effects of environmental filters on the functional structure of plant communities: a case study in the French Alps
Bello, Francesco de, Sandra Lavorel, Sébastien Lavergne, Cécile H. Albert, Isabelle Boulangeat, Florent Mazel, Wilfried Thuiller
2013 Ecography

12- On the importance of intraspecific variability for the quantification of functional diversity
Albert, Cécile H., Francesco de Bello, Isabelle Boulangeat, Gilles Pellet, Sandra Lavorel, Wilfried Thuiller
2012 Oikos

13- Working toward integrated models of alpine plant distribution
Carlson, Bradley Z., Christophe F. Randin, Isabelle Boulangeat, Sébastien Lavergne, Wilfried Thuiller, Philippe Choler
2013 Alpine Botany