Diane Srivastava
My research is motivated by curiosity about the natural world, interests in conservation and a passion for ideas. I grew up exploring the forests and lakes of Nova Scotia, and my ecological fieldwork has since taken me around the world, with research in Central and South America, Africa, England and arctic and temperate Canada. Many of my research ideas are developed through mentoring students and postdoctoral fellows. If you are interested in joining my research group, please click here.

Sarah Amundrud (PhD Student)
Research on ecological effects of climate change has traditionally focused on direct, physiological effects on species; however, we are beginning to recognize its potential to alter ecological communities and ecosystem processes indirectly, by affecting species interactions. Foundation and keystone species exert particularly strong effect on communities, and thus present a high potential to mediate ecological effects of climate change. In Monteverde, Costa Rica, water-filled bromeliads provide habitats (i.e. are foundation species) for diverse invertebrate food webs and occur along a climate (elevation) gradient. The keystone predator (damselfly-larvae) is absent from bromeliads in the relatively cool and wet high elevation bromeliads. Thus, these miniature ecosystems are ideal systems to examine the relative importance of direct and indirect ecological effects of climate change. I am combining observational, experimental, and modeling techniques to tease apart which factors best explain community composition: climate; habitat; or predators. Moreover, I use modeling techniques to predict community and ecosystem changes under future climate scenarios.

Gustavo Cauê (PhD Student, UNICAMP)
Gustavo is co-advised by Gustavo Romero and Diane Srivastava

Interested in the effects of cross-ecosystem trophic cascades, particularly the magnitude effects of predators living in land-water boundaries on aquatic ecosystem functioning.

Melissa Guzman (PhD Student)
Dispersal is an important mechanism in structuring community composition at regional scales. It can increase population ranges, prevent local extinction and increase the genetic pool for adaptation. The aquatic invertebrate community in bromeliads create food webs where they disperse from one bromeliad to the next forming metacommunities. I am interested in understanding the role of dispersal in food webs and how it structures a community at different scales. For this I'm going to do a series of experiments and models. I will estimate dispersal distances using a NGS approach.

Ana Z. Gonçalvez (PhD Student, UNICAMP)
Ana is co-advised by Gustavo Romero and Diane Srivastava

Different predator ants can construct their nests in tank bromeliads and they can alter the composition and species diversity in these micro-ecosystems through the predation behavior. Depending on the behavior of the ants, they can have different effects on the species composition in the bromeliads and alter the food chains, causing trophic cascades between the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Furthermore, they can also alter ecosystem processes (e.g., nutrient cycling and its availability to plants). In this context, I am interested in the influence of different predator ants on the nutrition and development of their host bromeliads and how they alter the terrestrial and aquatic biota in these plants.

Nicholás Marino (PhD Student, UFRJ)
Nicholas is co-advised by Vinicius Farjalla and Diane Srivastava

Climate change is an ongoing process that is already affecting several parts of the Earth. Ecological and evolutionary studies on the impacts of climate change traditionally focus on ecosystem and community-wide impacts of changes in temperature. However, changes in the precipitation regime are also predicted to occur - increasing the sensitivity of aquatic habitats to climate change. Moreover, some key direct (i.e. density mediated) and indirect (i.e. trait-mediated) species interactions, such as predation, may be disrupted or lost, amplifying the impact of climate change. Using tank-bromeliads as a model-system, I am interested in understanding how changes in precipitation can affect the consumptive and behavioural roles of predation in aquatic ecosystems.

Pierre Rogy (MSc Student)
The citrus greening disease is a bacterial field disease affecting citrus trees and spread by the jumping plant louse Diaphorina citri. It greatly reduces the lifespan of trees and makes the fruit unusable, causing substantial economic impacts. Biological control can be an efficient disease management strategy, and is already implemented in various orange orchards. If bromeliads are present in orchards, bromeliad-associated predators, such as ants, scorpions and spiders, and the biological control agents would compete for the same lice. However, the impacts of predation efficiency of several predators targeting the same prey item is highly context-specific and poorly understood. Thus, I am interested in assessing whether those predators can be used as a supplement to biological control in a synergistic relationship, which could have important consequences in terms of ecosystem services and pest management.

Natalie Westwood (PhD Student)
Forest fragmentation is a common problem that affects many landscapes, especially in the neotropics. This can lead to changes in how food webs are constructed, and consequently may change ecosystem processes in these communities. I am interested in understand how top-down and bottom-up controls on a community may affect the community composition and the ability for that community to function. I will also work to understand how these controls may differ in the context of forest fragmentation. In order to test this I will manipulate aquatic treehole communities in both fragmented and intact forest to determine the effects of both types of controls.