Event

PhD Oral Defense: The Effect of Landscape Structure on Insect Herbivory and Biodiversity: Implications for Forest Ecosystem Services in the Montérégie, Québec

Friday, February 27, 2015 13:15
Macdonald-Stewart Building MS2-022, 21111 Lakeshore Road, St Anne de Bellevue, QC, H9X 3V9, CA

PhD Oral Defense of Dorothy Y Maguire, Natural Resource Sciences

Anthropogenic disturbances are fragmenting forested areas around the world, fundamentally changing the structure of landscapes in a manner that has poorly understood consequences for biodiversity, ecological processes, and ecosystem services. This lack of understanding makes it difficult for land managers to make optimal decisions that balance environmental benefits and costs of land use change. In this thesis, I address this gap in our understanding by using a combination of theoretical and empirical approaches to quantify how and when fragmentation affects ecosystem processes that have distinct impacts on forest ecosystem services. Specifically, I test the role that insect herbivory plays in mediating the effects of landscape structure on ecosystem services in forest ecosystems in the Montégerie in southwest Quebec. Insect herbivory is a good model system to test these effects because it is sensitive to landscape structure, can have strong effects on ecosystem services, and can be either beneficial or harmful depending on the herbivore species and the ecosystem context. 


Everyone in the McGill community is welcome to attend a PhD oral defense. Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of our PhD candidates.

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