Research interests

Demo-genetic processes

There is a body of evidence that genetic changes in small, isolated populations are significantly involved in extinction and must be included in assessments of species (or population) viability. In particular, genetic threats have been shown to strongly interact with deterministic (such as habitat loss and fragmentation) and stochastic (such as demographic and environmental stochasticities) ecological factors. Part of my work is dedicated to the theoretical study of the demo-genetic interactions and their effect on the persistence of (meta)populations.

Inter-individual and environmental variation

I am also interested in understanding the effects of inter-individual, temporal and spatial variations and covariations in population and metapopulation dynamics. This includes individual quality, reproductive cost, senescence, spatial and temporal environmental variation and autocorrelation, Moran effects.

Population restorations

I apply population dynamic modeling and demo-genetic results to questions related to conservative restorations, with an emphasis on management constraints and on the practical aspects of the release of individuals. Another aspect of my work on restorations involves the analysis of survival patterns in reintroduced populations to study dispersal and density dependent processes.

Community and meta-community dynamics

More recently, I have become interested in the study of ecological processes influencing the dynamics of communities. The approach is based on the use of multi-species models accounting for ecological processes such as competition or predation. A large part of this work is dedicated to study the effects of environmental perturbations on taxonomic (e.g., species richness) and functional (e.g., specialization or trophic index) community metrics, and to the development of new integrative biodiversity metrics.