Welcome to the Wagner Lab

Helene H. Wagner Dr. sc. nat., ETH Zurich, 1999 Assistant Professor Department of Biology, University of Toronto Mississauga. Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, U of T. Associate faculty member, Centre for Environment, U of T. Tel:  +1-(905)-569-4702 Lab: +1-(905)-569-4696 Fax: +1-(905)-828-3792 Email: helene.wagner@utoronto.ca

Graphical summary

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Research Interests

I'm a landscape ecologist. My main research interest lies in understanding how human landscape alteration affects biodiversity patterns and processes. Ecological theories relating to biodiversity rely on assumptions on equilibrium conditions and dispersal that are often unrealistic in spatially heterogeneous and changing human altered landscapes. To determine how landscape affects biodiversity patterns and processes and derive implications for conservation and natural resource management, the research in my lab falls into three broad topics that are complementary to each other s:

• Spatial Ecology: Assess spatial and temporal patterns to identify key processes shaping population and community dynamics.

• Metacommunity dynamics: Assess the degree and determinants of connectivity among ecological communities and relate the resulting patterns of species diversity within and among communities to landscape pattern and landscape change.

• Landscape Genetics: Provide a mechanistic link between landscape structural connectivity and functional connectivity by testing hypotheses on which landscape features critically affect dispersal and gene flow.

Depending on the research question, I combine approaches of field experiments, surveys of natural populations and communities, and computer simulation, using a broad range of methods including spatial and multivariate statistics, GIS, molecular genetics, soil analysis, and spatio-temporal dynamic modeling.

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