47th annual colloquium of the SQEBC

Kyle received his PhD in 2014 from the University of Manitoba, where he was a Vanier Scholar and Garfield-Weston Fellow. He received his two BSc’s in Physics & Math and Conservation Biology from UBC, followed by a MSc at the University of Manitoba. He completed NSERC postdoctoral research at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Guelph prior to starting at McGill in 2015. Kyle recently received the Ned Johnston Young Investigator Award from the American Ornithologists Union. He serves on the board of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists and on the Editorial Board of the Marine Ecology Progress Series. He has conducted research on four continents from the Amazon to the Arctic, but specializes in the Canadian Arctic where he has studied birds on 14 of the islands in the Canadian Archipelago over the past 15 years. The sustainability of Arctic communities depends on their access to clean and abundant food, which is the subject of Dr. Elliott’s research at McGill.

Dr. Lesage did her graduate studies on marine mammals. Her master's degree, completed at Laval University, focused on the effect of boat and ferry noise on the vocal behaviour of belugas. She continued her doctoral studies at the University of Waterloo on food ecology of harbour seals. She has been a researcher on cetaceans at risk at the Maurice Lamontagne Institute of Fisheries and Oceans Canada since 2000. Her research focuses on several aspects of species ecology and anthropogenic and climatic threats, and affects several species such as beluga, blue whale, fin whale, right whales and even sea turtles. She is the principal author of all contributions published on the St. Lawrence beluga over the past 25 years. For her presentation, she will talk about the decline of the St. Lawrence beluga population, the current state of knowledge as to the probable causes of it.

Dr. Leclerc's research aims to better understand the effects of human activities on the ecology and evolution of wildlife. He mainly uses geomatics and statistical models to combine environmental, ecological and genetic data to quantify the influence of climate change, habitat modification and human harvest on the behaviour, reproduction and survival of wildlife species. The results of his research bring new knowledge to important theoretical questions and help to develop effective actions for the management and conservation of biodiversity.