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Madeleine BarryteI am currently working towards my Ph.D. at Trent University, Ontario, CA. My research focuses on population dynamics of salamanders. Understanding the abiotic and biotic mechanisms that govern community assemblage has been a long-standing aspiration of ecology. My project aims to investigate the community dynamics of the salamander complex on Pelee Island. Pelee Island is a metacommunity encompassing multiple, spatially distinct salamander communities that vary in composition and abundance of bisexual hosts, Ambystoma laterale and Ambystoma texanum, and polyploid unisexual Ambystoma with varying genome compositions. However, the Unisexual Ambystoma are obligative reproductive parasites―dependent on the sperm of small-mouthed and blue-spotted salamanders. Despite this, unisexual salamanders have coexisted with their sperm-donor counterparts for millennia and have likely mitigated extirpation by evolving an evolutionary stable strategy. Because the mechanisms involved in this stable strategy have heretofore remained opaque, my research is designed to illuminate the principal components governing the community structure. Utilizing long-term survey data from Pelee Island to assess patterns of abundance and composition of salamander communities across Pelee Island and determine how community assemblage differs between developmental stages, examine the influence of environmental factors on community composition across the island, and assess long-term trends in community dynamics. Results will contribute to disentangling the mechanisms fundamental to community structuring and persistence, a requisite to understanding how communities will change under future environmental conditions.
Education M.Sc. Biology, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, BE (2022 – 2024) B.S. Biology, University of Oregon, USA (2015 – 2019) Contact [email protected] |