Thursday, June 26, 2025

Welcoming new postdoc from China

This spring we welcome new postdoc, Xiaohui Wang. Xiaohui is interested in how landscape heterogeneity鈥攑articularly mean field size and crop diversity鈥攁ffects crop productivity. Her research focuses on the 鈥渇ield size鈥揷rop diversity鈥損ractice鈥搚ield鈥� framework to understand their interactions and support the redesign of agricultural... More

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Skate to pub returns!

After two years of no ice, this winter we are having a banner year for skating on the canal! We even did our formerly-annual skate to the pub, and conditions were the best they've ever been for this 30-year tradition :)... More

Thursday, February 13, 2025

2024 research roundup – habitat fragmentation and so much more

In 2024 we published 12 papers. In our habitat fragmentation research: we found positive effects of fragmentation on the iconic Glanville fritillary butterfly metapopulation (pdf); we showed that patch-scale edge effects are not evidence of landscape-scale fragmentation effects (pdf); we found no lag effects of fragmentation on lichens (pdf); and... More

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Two new postdocs join the lab

At this year's annual potluck we welcomed two new postdocs to the lab. Sandara Brasil-Peixoto is an ecologist interested in how climate and anthropogenic changes, such as urban expansion and desertification, impact wild bee populations. Her current research aims to understand how urban environmental stressors impact bee morphological traits and... More

Thursday, October 24, 2024

International student researchers visiting the lab

This fall-winter we welcome two visiting student researchers to the lab. Marina de Souza is a PhD student from the Universidade Federal do Paran谩 in Brazil. While in the lab Marina will develop part of her thesis on road ecology using an extensive dataset to estimate the effect of paving on roadkill rate. She... More

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Welcoming visiting researcher Dr. Aino H盲m盲l盲inen

Dr. Aino H盲m盲l盲inen is spending a year in the lab to study how landscape structure affects the diversity of forest-dwelling lichens. Aino has conducted many lichen surveys across Swedish forests and during her time with us she will study the effects of habitat amount and fragmentation on lichen diversity and whether these effects differ... More

Thursday, June 1, 2023

2022 publications – fragmentation, connectivity, heterogeneity, and roads

In 2022 we published 9 papers on habitat loss and fragmentation, landscape connectivity, landscape heterogeneity, and road ecology. Under the general heading of habitat loss and fragmentation: (1) we showed that a given amount of habitat is more likely to be lost from small patches than from large patches (Riva et al. 2022), despite... More

Friday, July 22, 2022

Welcoming a new postdoc to the lab

This month we welcome a new postdoc, Carmen Gal谩n, to the lab. Carmen is a tropical landscape ecologist with a particular focus on primates. She aims to understand species鈥� responses to human modified landscapes and how species traits influence those responses. For her postdoctoral work Carmen will use big global datasets to assess the... More

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Skate to the (actual) pub!

Last Friday we had our annual skate to the pub event. Covid restrictions eased up in time for us to go to an actual pub this year. At the starting point. Part-way there. The ice was rough but perseverance... More

Monday, February 7, 2022

Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA goes to three spatial ecologists

Last week I learned that I am to be one of three ecologists receiving the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge award. A big thank-you to Victor Arroyo-Rodriguez for nominating me! What a huge thrill! It was a special thrill to learn that I am to share the prize with Simon Levin and Steward Pickett,... More

Friday, October 29, 2021

New PhD Student Jessica Lockhart

This fall we welcome Jessica Lockhart to the lab to start her PhD degree. Jessica is interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying species responses to land use change. She completed a Masters of Natural Resources Management at the University of Manitoba where she studied the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on grassland... More

Monday, October 4, 2021

World Habitat Day: Nature Conservancy of Canada highlights our research

Today is World Habitat Day!! The Nature Conservancy of Canada is celebrating by highlighting the value of small habitat patches. The idea came to Sam Knight of NCC while she was attended my talk on the topic last August at the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution meeting. You can read Sam's blog here:... More

Monday, March 29, 2021

2020 Paper Round-up

In 2020 we published 9 papers on habitat loss and fragmentation, sustainable farmlands, and road ecology. On habitat loss and fragmentation, we updated the old "single small or several large" SLOSS debate (Fahrig 2020), showing that several small patches hold more species than few large ones. We found support for the Habitat Amount Hypothesis... More

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

杏吧原创 highlights habitat fragmentation research

Last summer three of our MSc students conducted arduous field work on the effects of forest loss, fragmentation, and connectivity on birds, small mammals and plants. Now 杏吧原创's communications team has highlighted our work on habitat fragmentation, including photos of Adrianne, Lindsay, and Joe in the field. Read it here:... More

Friday, January 1, 2021

Two new lab babies

Lab productivity went way up at the end of 2020, with the arrival of two new babies only 15 minutes apart (!) on December 17th. PhD student Iman Momeni holding baby Liyana. PhD student Samantha Morin holding baby... More

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Five new additions to the lab this year

This year we welcome - via zoom - five new lab members! Sean Patterson is an MSc student. He will be looking at road and traffic effects on porcupine populations. Porcupines have only one baby per year so we predict that road kill has a big effect on their populations. Alec Medd is also... More

Monday, September 7, 2020

Conservation Science faculty position at 杏吧原创

杏吧原创 is advertising a faculty position in Conservation Science. The closing date is October 1st. Here is the link to the ad: /biology/employment-opportunities/#sect1.2 Please distribute this far and wide, especially to landscape ecologists :)... More

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Small crop fields and biodiversity: The Conversation

The Conversation is a news outlet that provides a link between research and the public. Articles in The Conversation are written by researchers in collaboration with an editor to make them engaging to the public and other media. This week The Conversation published an article about our work showing that agricultural landscapes with small... More

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Skate to Pub, and SLOSS

Last week was the lab's annual skate to the pub. As you can see, it was a fabulous day. The ice was so good even a Brazilian gave it a go! 聽聽 On the way Arrived At the pub   Meanwhile, I was over here in Germany on sabbatical, running a workshop on "SLOSS... More

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

No-fly sabbatical in Europe

Five years ago I gave up flying. I had discovered that air travel was by far the biggest part of my personal carbon footprint - four times as big as heating my house with gas (which we've now stopped doing) and ten times as big as the small amount of driving I do. To... More

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Tree of Life at Convocation

This fall I had the honour of giving the convocation address. Here's what I said:   "Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Chair of the Board of Governors, colleagues, graduates, and cheering section: President Bacon has asked me to speak about sustainability and to give you some advice. He's given me just 5 minutes. This won't be easy... More

Thursday, September 26, 2019

4 new MSc students join the lab this fall

This fall we welcome four new MSc students to the lab. Kayla Attinello will test the "space for time" assumption that is common throughout ecology, especially landscape ecology. For example, if forest bird diversity is lower in a landscape with less forest than in a landscape with more forest (space), can we conclude that... More

Thursday, September 26, 2019

2 Brazilian PhD students to spend the winter in the lab

Two Brazilian students will spend part of their PhD's with us in the lab this winter, thanks to scholarships from the Brazilian Government. Tain谩 Assis is studying at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research. She is researching how the community of small mammals is changing due to the advancing agricultural frontier in the... More

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Blast from the past

Indian researcher, Hari Sridhar (see photo), has posted an interview about my 1985 (!) paper in Ecology on his blog site called "Reflections on Papers Past: Revisiting old papers in ecology and evolution through interviews with their authors" Here is the link to the interview:... More

Friday, April 12, 2019

A year in publications – 2018

Last year the Fahrig lab published 9 journal articles on amphibians, bats, birds, and insects, and more. Here are some of our results. Landscape context is more important than wetland buffers for farmland amphibians. Bat and bat prey abundance are higher at organic than conventional fields. Habitat specialist birds disperse farther than habitat... More

Friday, April 12, 2019

How big is a landscape?

... More

Thursday, September 27, 2018

And another Mexican visits the lab

Visiting PhD student Marisela Mart铆nez Ru铆z is spending 3 months in the lab to hone her landscape ecology know-how. Marisela works on raptors (birds of prey). During her MSc Marisela studied forest falcons in the rain forest. For her PhD she moved to the dry forest of western Mexico where she is studying habitat... More

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Lauren Hepburn’s work highlighted

In her MSc research Lauren Hepburn found the most amazing thing - if our neighbourhood has more bird species in it, we like it better, *even though we are not consciously aware of the birds*! I guess this means urban planners could surreptitiously improve peoples' happiness by taking measures to increase bird diversity in... More

Monday, May 28, 2018

Lauren Moretto finalist in 3-minute thesis competition

Lauren Moretto, MSc graduate at this spring's convocation, was a finalist in 杏吧原创's 3 minute thesis competition. She did an incredible job of explaining 2 years of her life in 3 minutes to a general audience. Batman helped. You can see Lauren in action here:... More

Monday, May 28, 2018

Scientist from Mexico spending 6 months in the lab

Dr. Victor Arroyo-Rodriguez, a professor from the Universidad Nacional Aut贸noma de M茅xico, is spending 6 months in the lab during his sabbatical. Victor works on the impact of land-use change on tropical biodiversity (both plants and animals) across different spatial scales.  ... More

Monday, March 5, 2018

A year in publications – 2017

Last year the Fahrig lab published 11 journal articles on landscape effects on birds, beetles, mammals, and amphibians. Here are some of our results. Habitat fragmentation, independent of habitat loss, generally has no effect or a positive effect on species. The habitat amount hypothesis is supported for European forest beetles and South American... More

Friday, October 13, 2017

Two international researchers spending a year in the lab

This year we have two international researchers spending the whole year with us. Our Brazilian connection continues with Dr. Eliana Cazetta, a Professor from Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Bahia, Brazil. Eliana and her students study biodiversity patterns and processes in human-modified landscapes. She joins the lab for a sabbatical year,... More

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Lab spring camping June 2-4

Why do we always go camping at the end of May? a) we're doing a research project on black flies b) we need to do actual field work in the summer c) we want the whole lake to ourselves d) the summer is too hot e) fish, hungry after a long winter, nibble at... More

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Lab represented at CSEE

Two lab members - postdoc Amanda Martin and MSc student Andrew Moraga - gave talks at the most recent meeting of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution in Victoria BC. Amanda's talk was on her research showing that more dispersive species can be at *greater* risk than sedentary species from landscape change. Andrew... More

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Forty years of bias in habitat fragmentation research

Why do most conservation biologists and practitioners think that a single large habitat patch has higher conservation value than a number of small patches totaling the same area as the single large patch, when the opposite is actually true? Find out in this upcoming book chapter:... More

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