People

Jeremy Fox, PI

His name's on the door, so he must be in charge (?) Jeremy did a BA at Williams College and a PhD in Ecology & Evolution under Peter Morin at Rutgers University. He spent four years as a postdoc at the NERC Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College London before coming to Calgary in 2004. Jeremy is broadly interested in population, community, and evolutionary ecology. 

Brian Kopach, graduate student

Brian joined the lab in 2006 after finishing his MSc in geography at Victoria. His MSc was on grey whale habitat use, but he had to switch study systems when he found out how rare whales are in Alberta. Brian now works on varileaf cinquefoil, a small alpine plant. Brian is interested in how neighboring plants alter the selection pressures on varileaf cinquefoil, thereby affecting local adaptation. The conventional wisdom is that the harsh abiotic environment is the primary selection pressure to which alpine plants must adapt. But ecologists have shown that neighboring plants often facilitate one another in the alpine, often by ameliorating harsh abiotic conditions. Such facilitation might weaken or even reverse selection pressures imposed by the abiotic environment. This project has implications for a range of issues, including the ecological and evolutionary determinants of range limits.

Colin Olito, graduate student

Colin joined the lab in 2009 after finishing his bachelor's at Hawaii, where he worked with Tad Fukami. Colin published his honors thesis in Am Nat (Olito & Fukami 2009 Am Nat 173:354-362), which puts him ahead of Jeremy (who published his honors thesis in Oikos). Colin is interested in community assembly and the structure of ecological networks such as plant-pollinator networks. He spent last summer documenting the structure of an alpine plant-pollinator network. In future he'll be using models and experiments to examine the links between network structure, pollen limitation, competition for pollinators, and selection on flowering phenology. Colin's website is here.

Stephen Hausch, graduate student

Stephen joined the lab in 2009 after finishing his bachelor's at UBC, where he worked with Jon Shurin and Blake Matthews. Stephen is interested in species' traits, local adaptation, competition, and the maintenance of species and genetic diversity. He's working with bean beetles and their parasitoids, a classic model system for eco-evolutionary studies of competition. He's co-advised by Steve Vamosi.

Geoff Legault, graduate student

Geoff is our newest student, joining us in F 2011 after finishing his MSc at Toronto under Art Weis. Geoff tentatively plans to use protist microcosms as a model system for looking at spatial synchrony of population fluctuations.

Fox Lab alumni

Dave Vasseur, postdoc
Louise Hahn, lab manager and technician
Jessica Scharein, lab manager and technician
Tara Janes, lab manager and technician
Rameez Kabani, undergrad summer assistant
Grant Colijn, undergrad summer assistant
Ashlee Lillis, undergrad summer assistant
Christina Suzanne, undergrad summer assistant
Alycia Wilson, undergrad summer assistant
Juliette Chamagne, independent study student
Jose Larrosa, graduate exchange student
Joyce MacNeil, undergrad summer assistant
Jodie Roberts, undergrad summer assistant
Ania Karzynska, independent study student
Zoe Cheung, undergrad summer assistant
Geoff Osgood, undergrad summer assistant
Liz Brennan, undergrad summer assistant
Julie Thomas, undergrad summer assistant and indep. study student
Stephanie Thibodeau, undergrad summer asst. and indep. study student
Jodie Einarson, undergrad summer assistant