Université de Montréal
Ph.D. candidate
Supervisor: Etienne Laliberté
Start: 2016-05-01
End: 2020-05-01

Project

Studying plant belowground functional diversity along fertility gradients to predict changes in plant biodiversity
The overall aim of my master project will is to develop a predictive ecological model characterizing the plant community response to environmental changes, with an emphasis on nutrient availability in soils and plant functional traits. In order to do so, I will use a long-term soil chronosequence in Australia that represents one of the strongest local nutrient availability gradient ever characterized and will i) measure changes in plant functional diversity along the fertility gradient, ii) determine the community assembly mechanisms (i.e. environmental filtering) using patterns of functional diversity and iii) measure the degree of coordination between the functional root and aerial traits and the influence of that coordination on the environmental context.