www.ucalgary.ca/president/about-president/ed-mccauleyDr. Jalene LaMontagne, Professor
I am a macrosystems biologist and global change ecologist, and I have broad interests in the patterns and drivers of synchrony and variability over space and time. I received my undergraduate degree in Ecology at the University of Calgary where I completed a thesis on food availability and maternal effects in Daphnia pulex with Dr. Edward McCauley. My Master's degree is in Conservation Ecology, where I studied habitat selection and behaviour of trumpeter swans during spring migration with Dr. Robert Barclay and Dr. Lee Jackson at the University of Calgary. I completed my PhD in Environmental Biology and Ecology at the University of Alberta where I focused on spatial and temporal variation in resource availability and impacts on consumer populations in a white spruce-red squirrel system in Yukon, Canada. I have been involved in conservation-related research on a variety of species, including trumpeter swan habitat selection, spatial variation in sage grouse population dynamics, caribou responses to industrial disturbance, and red-headed woodpecker habitat selection and nest use. In 2024, I became the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor in Botanical Studies in the Department of Biology at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, where I am also affiliated with the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center, and I am a Research Associate in the Science & Conservation Division at the Missouri Botanical Garden. My lab conducts research on patterns and drivers of spatial-temporal synchrony among and within populations, macrosystems biology, and global change biology including climate change impacts and urban ecology. Previously, I was a faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences at DePaul University in Chicago; I joined DePaul in 2011, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018, and Professor in 2022. Prior to DePaul, I was a founding faculty member at the Asian University for Women, the first liberal arts university for women in South Asia, located in Bangladesh. I am a Research Affiliate with The Morton Arboretum, an Adjunct Scientist at the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo, a Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, and a collaborator on the Spruce and Peatland Response Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE) experiment run by the Department of Energy/Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
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Current lab members
Addy (Adrianna) Yoder (PhD student 2022- )
Addy completed her double-BA in Biology and Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University. Her research interests include animal behavior and wildlife ecology and conservation. For Addy’s graduate research, she is studying habitat characteristics and oak masting in relation to the seasonal cavity use of Red-headed Woodpeckers. This project involves a collaboration with the Illinois Natural History Survey; Addy started as a MS student at DePaul in 2022, and in 2024 Addy transferred to the PhD program at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. |
Riley Adams (NSF-REU Program 2022-2024; MS student 2024 - )
Riley joined the lab in summer 2022 through the NSF-Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program. Riley's project is focusing on comparing four visual methods for collecting data on tree reproduction in 10 species (5 conifers, 5 deciduous tree species). Riley completed a BS in Biology with a minor in Sustainability Studies. Riley's main interests are conservation and climate change, and hopes to use her skills to make the world a better place. In Fall 2024, Riley joined the lab at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. |
Jesse Grooms (MS student 2023- )
Jesse completed his BS in Biology (Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation) at Missouri Southern State University. His interests include Ecology and Macrosystems Biology. For Jesse's MS research, he is looking for ecological dipoles that exist within seed-eating small mammal and bird populations at continental scales. |
Kiley Chernicky (MS student 2022- )
Kiley completed her BS in Environmental Biology at the University of South Florida. Kiley's research interests center around population dynamics of mixed conifer forests. For her MS research, she is focusing on regeneration in populations of white spruce (Picea glauca) and balsam fir (Abies balsamea) in the southern boreal forest - hardwood forest ecotone. |
Jessica Barton (Research Technican 2020- / Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program / Research Assistant 2017- 2019)
Jessica has been working as a Research Technician on our NSF-funded Macrosystems and Early-NEON Science research project since spring of 2020, organizing permit acquisition, data collection, and managing large databases. Jessica is also a member of a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Synthesis working group on the 'Environmental Drivers of Plant Reproduction'. Jessica first joined the lab through the Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program in 2017. She has worked on a number of systems, from Daphnia pulex population dynamics, to long-term population trends of a suite of tree-cavity nesting bird species in urban and rural environments and investigating interactions between European Starlings and Red-Headed Woodpeckers (Barton et al. 2020). Jessica graduated with her B.S. in June 2019. |
Roberto Cucalon (Research Collaborator 2020- / Lab Technician 2019-2020 )
Roberto completed his undergraduate degree at Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral from Ecuador, and then obtained his M.S. in Biological Sciences from DePaul University. He is interested in studying the evolutionary history of species and how that relates to their geography and ecology. His research in the lab involves investigating whether the genetic relatedness of perennial plants that undergoes mast seeding events is associated with the within-population variability in seed crop production, using white spruce (Picea glauca) as a model species. Roberto is pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he is continuing his studies in evolutionary biology. |
Abigail Leeper (Research Associate 2020 - / Master's Student 2018-2020 / Lab Technician 2017 - 2018 / Undergraduate Summer Research Program / Undergraduate Research Assistant Program / Honor's Thesis Student 2014-2017)
Abby completed her MS in the lab in 2020, examining consequences of asynchrony in mast seeding related to a spruce budworm outbreak. Previously, she was a lab technician on an NSF funded project on white spruce mast seeding, and published research on relationships between plant-available soil nutrients and mast seeding patters (Leeper et al. 2020). Abby originally joined the lab in 2014 and worked on acorn diversity and abundance near Red-headed woodpecker tree cavities. In summer 2015, Abby transitioned to working on mast seeding in white spruce, and conducted independent research on conifer seedling diversity. Abby's Honor's thesis looked at life-history trade offs and mast seeding in white spruce and she graduated with a BS in 2017. Abby then worked as a seasonal Wildlife Technician with the McHenry County Conservation District working on green snakes and native seed collection, before rejoining the lab. Abby current works at The Morton Arboretum. She is also a coauthor on a paper investigating tree cavity availability in cemeteries and city parks (Bovyn et al. 2019). |
Lab Alumni
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Michael Wade (Undergraduate assistant / Honor's Thesis Student 2015-2017)
Michael studied spatial patterns in white spruce growth for his Honour's thesis . In summer 2016, Michael was awarded a Dean's Undergraduate Fellowship from the College of Science and Health to work at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Michael is currently working at the Vanderbilt Center for Quantitative Sciences and Department of Biostatistics as an Editorial Assistant, and will be starting an MS in Data Science. |
Kattie Morris (2013-2017)
During Kattie's time in the lab, she did a field research project on population patterns of European Starlings with a variety of cavity nesters, and overwinter tree cavity use and nest site competition of Red-headed woodpeckers. Kattie earned her undergraduate degree from Elmhurst College in 2009. She had also worked at the Environmental Science Division of the Argonne National Laboratory, where she was involved in a variety of research projects. |
Elsa Anderson (Master's Student 2012-2014)
Elsa was the first MS student out of the LaMontagne Lab, where she studied habitat selection of Red-headed woodpeckers for nest sites in Cook County, IL (Anderson & LaMontagne 2014, LaMontagne et al. 2015, Anderon & LaMontagne 2016). Elsa also was part of a collaborative research project on the physiological ecology of Sesarma reticulatum (the purple marsh crab) as related to their range expansion as part of the Research in Field Biology course at DePaul (Shaughnessy et al. 2017). Elsa completed her PhD at UIC in 2018 where she examined the ecological and social factors influencing species diversity in vacant lots. |
Michael Lordon (Undergraduate Summer Research Program / Summer Research Assistant 2013 - 2015)
Michael took part in the Undergraduate Summer Research Program (USRP) in 2013 where he studied arthropod diversity and abundance across Red-headed woodpecker habitats in Cook County. He also worked on tree community composition across a barrier island, compiled data for a study on global synchrony in mast seeding, and conducted summer fieldwork on mast seeding in white spruce. Michael completed his BS in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Ecology & Evolution in 2014. He completed his MS in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan in spring 2017. He is the co-lead author on a paper in Marine Ecology (Zlatev et al. 2019) and is a coauthor on a paper investigating tree cavity availability in cemeteries and city parks (Bovyn et al. 2019). |
Heather Anderson (Undergraduate Research Assisantship Program 2014 - 2015)
Heather worked as a research assistant in the lab, maintaining Daphnia tanks for a project on food quality shifts during population cycles, and taking samples for water chemistry. She completed her undergraduate degree at DePaul in 2015. Heather has had a long interest in working with animals, and she worked as a Seasonal Zookeeper at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. |
Dimitar Zlatev (Independent Study 2013 - 2014)
Dimitar studied community ecology and predator selection of bivalve prey by moon snails. He is the co-lead author on our paper in Marine Ecology (Zlatev et al. 2019). After completing his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at DePaul in 2014, he worked as a laboratory technician at Environmental Monitoring and Technologies, Inc. between 2014-2016. Dimitar completed his Master's at Utrecht University in the The Netherlands, between 2016-2018. |
Allison Grecco (Undergraduate Summer Research Program / Independent Study / Honor's Thesis 2012 - 2015)
Allison helped to set up the initial field sites for the long-term white spruce mast seeding project. She also researched variation in white spruce cone size. In 2014, Allison spent the summer as a NSF REU student in Minnesota studying purple coneflower reproductive synchrony. She is a coauthor on a paper investigating tree cavity availability in cemeteries and city parks (Bovyn et al. 2019). |