Past and present students of my laboratory
Emilie Champagne
PhD Student
I started in JP Tremblay lab as a master student in 2009, studying birch responses to caribou browsing, especially how birch can compensate biomass loss and how it will influence following forage availability. As I am highly interested in plant-herbivore relationships, I started a Ph.D. in the lab in 2013. In my thesis, I’m studying how neighboring effects influence plant susceptibility to browsing by large herbivores, mainly white-tailed deer. Vegetation assemblage can modify susceptibility to browsing by attracting or repulsing herbivores. I’m especially interested in how this interaction can be modified by spatial scale and by the nutritive quality of plants and of their surrounding.
To answer these questions, my thesis is build around three different scientific methods: 1) a meta-analysis of the interaction between spatial scale and neighboring effects; 2) a natural experiment, where I measure deer browsing on balsam fir (Anticosti Island) or on white pine (Outaouais region) with various vegetation assemblage; 3) a feeding experiment, where I propose various assemblage to wild deer.
Aside from my thesis, I’m highly interested in open science, dissemination of science to the general public and women in science issues. I like to share my research and to discuss my views about science. You can follow these ideas and my progress in my Ph.D. on twitter or on my blog (mostly in French, sometimes in English). I can also be found on ResearchGate and Academia.
Dalie Côté-Vaillancourt
MSc Student
I first started in JP Tremblay's lab in 2012 as a honour thesis student. I was interested in how the interaction between climate change and caribou browsing influenced the diversity of arctic plant communities. In 2014, I started a master degree on moose population dynamic in the lab. I'm using a citizen science approach to estimate moose population relative abundance based on hunter observations. I'm comparing aerial survey estimations and results from population dynamic models: Chande-in-ratio, Catch per unit effort, Seen per unit effort and Recruitment-Mortality. By the end of the project, I will be able to estimate the hunter observation potential to estimate moose populations, to point the limits of a citizen science approach for population dynamic studies and to suggest improvements to the existing protocol of moose observations on my study area.
A french version of my personal web page can be found here.
Valérie Saucier
MSc 2014
Through the years of my bachelor degree, I had always had a particular interest for the arctic vegetation, especially shrubs. I started my master in JP Tremblay's lab in 2012, working on the interactions of caribou browsing and the direct and indirect effects of climate warming on forage availability and quality.
I always thought my master project was of
high interest because climate warming is on
our door step, we are experiencing it, and
because caribou in Quebec, and around the
arctic circle have seen their population
decline. To study how the forage quantity and quality changes with climate warming and browsing enables the decisions makers to take better management decisions regarding caribou.
Aside from my masters project, I am concerned about all that is related to ecology. It fascinates me the way everything as a connection. I also always have been interested in vulgarization and environmental education. This is probably why I conceived a vulgarisation site on biology concept (that you can visit here!).
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