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Doctorants / Post-doctorants
Doctorants
BACOT, Tiphaine
Encadrée par Jean-Philippe DAVID et Jean-Marc BONNEVILLE
I am an ecologist with a special interest in evolutionary ecology, genetics and ecotoxicology. During my PhD, I will work on the genetic basis of insecticide resistance in the tiger mosquito. To do this, I will combine genomic and transcriptomic approaches to identify the genes, copy number variations and polymorphisms that cause resistance in wild populations. The aim is to predict spacio-temporal dynamic of resistance alleles in the field to enable anticipatory management of resistance, particularly in regions affected by arboviral outbreaks.
I’m an ecologist specialized in the use of remote sensing methods to study above-forest ecosystems dynamics with a special interest in the so-called "alpine greening". I have worked on arctic, alpine and glacier forelands vegetation with the idea to connect long-lasting trends in productivity indicators derived from remote sensing to changes in climate and/or land-use. I’m currently pursuing a PhD on vegetation dynamics of grazed mountain pastures in relation to climate and land use changes with emphasis in tree dynamics in the southern Alps.
DESCHAMPS, Gabrielle
Encadrée par Wilfried THUILLER et Clovis GALIEZ (LJK)
Toward integrated models of mountain plant distributions – futur scenarios and conservation planning
I am a PhD student at the Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine and the Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann (SVH research team). In my thesis, I use machine learning approaches to link functional traits with community assembly processes, in order to predict the distribution of alpine vegetation under current and future climate change.
DEVILLE CAVELLIN, Marion Sarah
Encadrée par Muriel RAVETON
I’m a PhD student at the Alpine Ecology Laboratory. I’m particularly interested in evolutionary ecology, genetics and ecotoxicology. My research focuses on the origin of heavy metal tolerance in a plant, Cardamine resedifolia, in the French Alps in relation to anthropogenic activities, and more specifically past mining activities. The aim is to understand how and why this small flower can grow in a site extremely contaminated by lead (Pb), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg) and coal, for example. We are using genetic data to determine the genetic component responsible for tolerance, and reciprocal transplantation data to determine the phenotypic plasticity component.
After studies in math, physics and ecology, I am now a (third year) PhD student in alpine and community ecology. I am mainly focused on the effect of ecosystem engineer (i.e species that modify the environment in which they live) on the community of organisms they shelter, but also on they way they modify the edaphic and climatic condition they live in. To do so, I use alpine cushion plants as study system. Cushion plants form discrete patches at high elevation, well separated by bare ground, that offer miniature ecosystems with complex communities, dominated by a single plant species. I mainly use molecular analysis to characterize communities, but also chemical and physical measurement to characterize soil and plant traits. Beside the fact that cushion plants are well adapted to study on engineer species, they are also amazing live being, growing in extreme environment, which bring questions on how ecosystemscan reach the tops of earth.
GOURY, Romain
Encadré par Tamara MÜNKEMÜLLER et Wilfried THUILLER
My work focuses on the spatio-temporal dynamics of plants in the French Alps.The first axis of my PhD is to describe plant temporal patterns over the last 40 years at species level in order to (1) identify and characterise the winners and losers species across the French Alps and (2) identify what are the drivers of these patterns (e.g. temperature, drought, land use) by inferring causal effects.The second axis of my PhD is to focus on community/macroecological approaches to study the shift in plant diversity across the French Alps. I want to characterise species turnover(i.e. community disturbance) in terms of species replacement but also functionally. Then, I’ll aim to understand which are the levers driving these changes, in order to spatially identify the most vulnerable communities across the Alps.This work be part of describing and understanding the current decline in biodiversity, by carrying out detection and attribution at species and community level.
I am interested in investigating the factors that drive progress along the speciation continuum. For my PhD, I aim to resolve the genomic signals of speciation in the Coenonympha butterflies. Specifically, I am using ecological, morphological, and whole-genome data to 1) reconstruct the evolutionary history of this genus and 2) scan for genomic changes that may account for patterns of species niche diversification. Over the course of this project, I hope to address fundamental questions about how biodiversity arises and is underpinned by genomic dynamics.
As a PhD student (co-joint PhD with the Department of Biological Sciences and Applied Biotechnologies of the University of Turin in Italy), I am working on the ecology of alpine birds. My research focuses on a high elevation bird species, the Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe), which is a characteristic migratory species of the alpine grasslands. I am interested in studying the breeding ecology in relation to trophic links, considering both the lower (prey) and higher (predator) trophic levels. The research group in Turin has a long-term monitoring on a alpine population of wheatear (that is still going on), that allows us to get data on phenology, habitat, breeding success, survival and migration. In addition to this annual monitoring, for my project, I use camera traps to study nest predation. I also collect feces to study the diet (with metabarcoding) and I sample invertebrates to assess food availability.
NICOUD, Baptiste
Encadré par Christophe CORONA et Sandra LAVOREL
I am an ecosystem scientist working on dynamics of mountain trees and shrubs. Using a combination of remote sensing tools, imagery analysis and dendrochronology methods, I aim to characterize the trajectories of woody ecosystems in high-elevation areas. These dynamics include the understanding of spatiotemporal expansion patterns and their drivers, such as deciphering the contribution of climate warming and land-use changes. I am also interested into the comprehension of radial growth at the treeline in a context of climate change. To achieve this, I use wood anatomy methods on both trees and shrubs. My research takes place mainly in the European Alps but also in the Carpathians.
PERRON, Rémy
Encadré par Philippe CHOLER
I’m an ecologist with special interest in the effect of public policies on environment. My PhD work aims at understanding the recent evolutions of mountain pastoral socio-ecosystems through a multidiciplinary approach. From an ecological point of view, I focus on the impacts of pastoral practices on vegetation dynamics in the alpine meadows. Conversly, from a social sciences point of view, I aim at understanding the main drivers of recent shifts in pastoral practices and how public policies take their impacts into account.
ROHR, Matthias
Encadré par Tamara MÜNKEMÜLLER et Wilfried THUILLER
My research focuses on community ecology. In my PhD, I use statistical and modelling methods to better understand the processes that govern community assembly. In a first step, I will focus on the study of plant community assembly rules. The aim is to generalise this study to more complex systems involving plants, fungi and the diversity of soil organisms, thus allowing the combined study of competitive and trophic interactions.
I’m a plant ecologist working on late-Quaternary history of high-elevation cushion plants. My PhD project aims to understand how these species’ population responded to past climate changes and where did these plants survived the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ; with the main hypothesis that nunataks (high-elevation bedrock summits protruding from glaciers) served as refugia for certain species like Androsace argentea or Eritrichium nanum. By means of comparative population genomics and Species Distribution Models (SDMs), coupled with geomorphology and gechronology to reconstruct nunataks’ suitability, I will try to construct a model-based test of Late-Pleistocene phylogeographic scenarios (phylogeny, demography and range-shift). Thus, I will try to highlight wheter or not high-altitude summits served as high-altitude-vegetation refugia during Pleistocene glaciations
My research focuses on the drivers of invertebrate distributions and temporal trends across scales. At the European scale, I am using Species Distribution Models to compare the ecological niches of invertebrate taxonomic and trophic groups and assess future changes in their distributions under different scenarios of climate and land-use change. At the landscape scale, I am combining machine learning approaches and satellite imagery to map invertebrate distributions at high resolution and explore the impact of landscape configuration and land-use patterns on recent changes in arthropod communities.
VOISIN, Camille
Encadré par Florian BOUCHER
I’m an ecologist working on plant’s evolution in the Alps. Interested in past plant history in alpine environments, my PhD project will focus on substrate adaptation and ecological speciation. Working on a group of beautiful perennial pink Brassicaceae (Noccaea rotundifolia, Round-leaved pennycress) to explore phylogeography, demographic history and speciation, I will try to highlight the role of substrate in mountain plant diversity. To do so, I will use morphologic, genetic, geo-physic and geo-chimic data associated with reciprocal transplant experiments.
WOOTTON, Lara
Encadrée par Sébastien LAVERGNE et Florian BOUCHER
I am a PhD student at the LECA, where I am studying the evolution and assembly of the Alpine flora using phylogenetic methods. I am particularly interested in how longterm climatic and geological processes have influenced the diversification and immigration rates of plant species in the high-elevation alpine sky islands. I am also studying whether geomorphological changes, such as fluctuations in erosion rates and the development of relief, can be linked to present day speciation patterns in the Alps.
Post-Doctorants
I am a quantitative ecologist with (broad) interests in macroecology, community ecology, functional ecology, biogeography and conservation biology.I develop and apply biodiversity theory to improve our understanding of how natural and anthropogenic changes drive ecological dynamics. I want to bridge gaps between different fields of ecology to build a more integrative ecological science that can(i) delineate the processes that rules biodiversity responses to environment changes at or across different spatial and temporal scales(ii) generate empirically falsifiable predictions for biodiversity dynamics under global changes(iii) provide guidances and better conceptual foundation for applied conservation biology.I focus on ecoinformatic approaches to explore long-term and large spatial-scale patterns and processes, and understand how historical, anthropogenic and biotic processes can shape past and contemporary biodiversity dynamics.I currently focus on understanding the maintenance and variation of ecological originality, and on the disequilibrium dynamics in community responses to climate change.
I am a freshwater ecologist currently focused in the impacts of drying in carbon-related ecosystem functions in drying river networks within the project DRYvER (Securing biodiversity, functional integrity and ecosystem services in drying river networks). My work is specially focused in analysing and modelling the green house gases (GHG) emissions rates collected in 6 river networks and several hydrological seasons in Europe and assess the relative contribution of abiotic and biotic controls. The objective is to produce climate-based GHG emission scenarios for these 6 networks and then at European scale.
I am a plant ecologist with broad interests in the forces that shape plant populations and communities in increasingly human-altered landscapes. Much of my work has focused on plant interactions with microbial mutualists, using experimental approaches and observational studies to explore how these mutualisms affect plant population establishment and persistence in restored habitats. At the LECA, my postdoc project focuses on the effects of climate change on soil biodiversity, food webs, and plant-soil interactions.
My research interests range from functional and community ecology to sustainability science. In my current work, I am investigating the relationship between the structure of landscapes and their multifunctionality, and more specifically how landscapes can be restored to promote both ecological connectivity and Nature’s Contributions to People. I am particularly interested in understanding the social and ecological factors driving spatial and social disparities in Nature’s Contributions to different people.
I am a spatial ecologist with strong interests in the study of spatial distribution of biodiversity and landscape connectivity at multiple scales. I apply different tools going from mechanistic movement models to phenomenological distribution models and base my analysis on both empirical and simulated datasets. I also enjoy evaluating existing models and developing new frameworks to tackle current methodological shortcomings in spatial ecology. My studies involved mainly large mammals, but I recently expanded my work to the study of biodiversity in general. My postdoc at LECA aims at generating a new framework to assess current and future connectivity of protected areas in the context of climate and land-use changes. I will also investigate whether current spatial distribution of protected areas could help biodiversity to cope with global changes and how future land planning could mitigate the effect of global changes on biodiversity. This work takes its place in the French case study of the European NaturaConnect project.
SI-MOUSSI, Sara
Encadrée par Wilfried THUILLER et Olivier FRANCOIS (TIMC-IMAG)
As a data scientist, my research generally explores the use of artificial intelligence techniques to unlock ecological knowledge from high-dimensional biodiversity observation data. In my PhD, I was interested in methods to infer species habitat preferences and asymmetric association networks using neural networks and machine learning interpretability tools.In my PostDoc, I am currently working on statistical methods to better harness the complexity of environmental DNA, in order to predict the community-level response of microorganisms along Alpine gradients.
I am interested in the forces shaping plant communities and species distributions, especially in mountains and in the context of global change. In my PhD, I explored the implications of mountain uplift and evolution for the diversification of mountain plants and their future responses to climate change. My current project as a postdoc at LECA is to model the responses of plant communities in the European Alps to future climate change and land use change under different scenarios of societal values. Rather than only predicting the potential habitat losses resulting from environmental degradation, this approach will also provide a positive framework for potential recovery based on possible courses of action motivated by different sets of nature-based priorities.