Bioenergetic approaches for understanding and forecasting ecological and epidemiological impacts of climate change

My research program in Quantitative Global Change Ecology aims to (i) document ecological and epidemiological impacts of climate change, land use change, and other anthropogenic disturbances, (ii) understand the mechanisms by which environmental change impacts ecosystems, and (iii) formalize these insights into data-validated forecast models that can inform proactive conservation and/or public health management strategies. My approach is interdisciplinary, integrating physiological, ecological and epidemiological concepts within mathematical models, and combining these models with experimental and field data to examine complex dynamics in quantitative frameworks.

Bioenergetic models, arising from Dynamic Energy Budget Theory and the Metabolic Theory of Ecology, often lie at heart of these approaches due to their ability of forecasting population dynamics changes in response to temperature-driven changes in physiological reaction rates and/or food availability. Current systems of interest include (i) the impacts of climate change on polar bears via sea ice loss and food deprivation; (ii) the role of climate change in observed range expansions of muskox and caribou parasites on the Arctic Archipelago of Canada; (iii) the role of climate change in observed range expansions of winter ticks in the Yukon Territories, and consequences for their moose, elk, deer, and caribou hosts; (iv) the effects of temperature changes on the infection dynamics of Ribeiroia ondatrae, a multi-host parasite that ranges from northern Mexico to southern Canada and is known for causing malformations in amphibians; and (v) the impacts of land use change on parasite transmission between domestic and wild animals on the Osa Peninsula, southern Costa Rica.