Our Team

Dr. Oliver P. Love

Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair
olove@uwindsor.ca

Research in our lab examines the physiological mechanisms driving life-history trade-offs and variation in fitness in both terrestrial and aquatic vertebrates spanning from temperate to Arctic ecosystems. We seek to solve applied issues in species of conservation concern using mechanisms that link environmental change with performance and fitness. Our work is supported by a number of research awards (NSERC Discovery, Northern Supplement, Canada Foundation for Innovation) as well as a recent Canada Research Chair in Integrative Ecology. Dr. Love received his BSc from Concordia University, his MSc from McGill, and his PhD from Simon Fraser University. His NSERC-funded post-doc at the Université du Québec à Rimouski involved work in the Eastern Canadian Arctic and he joined the Biology Department at the University of Windsor in 2009. Dr. Love has also been a hybrid member of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) since 2014.

Chris Harris

Lab Manager
2013 - Present

Chris began in our lab in 2010 as a lab technician, completed his MSc on examining the validity of feather corticosterone as a relevant biomarker of environmental stress in tree swallows in 2014 and during that time became our full-time lab manager. Chris works on everything from Tree swallow field work and winter bunting banding to developing/supervising physiological assays in the lab and its general smooth running. If you need a complex lab, technical or field problem solved, Chris is your solution.

Dr. Audrey Le Pogam (co-supervised w/ Dr. François Vézina)

Post-Doctoral Fellow
2021 - Present

Understanding how and why organisms respond morphologically, behaviourally and physiologically to environmental variation allows us to uncover the mechanisms by which we expect them to respond to climate change. For her PhD at the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) where she worked with her primary supervisor Dr. François Vézina, Audrey examined the metabolic adaptations and cold acclimation mechanisms that allow free-living and captive Snow buntings to survive and thrive across a highly variable annual cycle. Audrey’s work now shifts to focus on examining whether the very same adaptations which have made buntings such capable cold specialists now are making them maladapted to a rapidly-warming Arctic. As a post-doctoral fellow, Audrey continues to support the ArcticScope team led by Dr. Vézina and supported by the Love Lab, Dr. Kyle Elliott, and Dr. Anna Hargreaves. Very glad we can continue working together Audrey!

Dr. Allison Patterson

Post-Doctoral Fellow
2022 - Present

Our research group has been very fortunate to have been working with Allison over the past 5-6 years while she has been the lead PhD student at the Coats island Thick-billed murre colony in the low Canadian Arctic led by collaborators Dr. Kyle Elliott of McGill University and Dr. Grant Gilchrist of Environment and Climate Change Canada. Carrying on her recent tracking and energetic work on murres, Allison joined our research team to investigate using eDNA collected from buccal and fecal swabs of murres could be used to identify dietary decisions in murres within and across season/breeding colonies. Allison has been working closely with former MSc student Keta Patel in Dr. Daniel Heath’s lab at the University of Windsor and we are getting very close to developing some great tools that we hope can be of use to all seabird biologists in the future! Over the past two field seasons Allison has been working with former MSc student Alyssa Eby at both the Coats island and Cape Graham Moore murre breeding colonies to assess the impacts of environmental change on behaviour, energetics, physiology and diet at low- and high-Arctic breeding colonies. So happy to officially have you on our team Allison!

Sarah Senécal (co-supervised w/ Dr. François Vézina)

PhD Candidate
2021 - Present

We all know that using more time, energy or even resources during one part of our lives will eventually come back to impact a future stage of our lives. Sarah is examining just that by looking at the carry-over effects of the costs of breeding to subsequent life history stages (e.g., winter) in Black-capped chickadees. To examine these complex effects, Sarah is using a diversity of cutting-edge experimental techniques in a free-living population of chickadees that she and her team can track all through the year. Based at the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) where she is working with her primary supervisor Dr. François Vézina, Sarah’s fascinating project combines energetic physiology, behavioural ecology and a strong emphasis on life history trade-offs. We are very happy to be included in this amazing work with such a great research team, and we are looking forward to helping them to break new ground in asking how organisms manage the costs of living across their entire lifetime. Welcome Sarah!

Inès Fache (co-supervised w/ Dr. François Vézina)

PhD Candidate
2022 - Present

In the past century, landscape composition across North America has been changing dramatically. Whether we measure these impacts as changes in weather or the loss of wild habitats due to agricultural intensification, this change is expected to have significant impacts on animal populations. Inès is working to understand how the influence of changing environmental parameters affects the physiology and population distribution of a highly nomadic species that visits Southern Canada during our winter: the Snow bunting. For her PhD project, Inès will first examine winter population changes from broad spatial scales (continental and National) to finer spatial scales (Provinces and States) to examine whether buntings populations have been declining at the same rates across their North American Wintering range. Based at the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) where she is working with her primary supervisor Dr. François Vézina, Inès will combine different approaches, using historical data obtained by community science projects with experimental techniques on free-living and captive birds to examine the mechanisms that may be responsible for these changes over time. Welcome to our teams Inès!

Patricia Rokitnicki (co-supervised by Dr. Emily McKinnon)

PhD Candidate
2023 - Present

Patricia completed her Master’s in Science at Western University in May 2023, where her research primarily focused on the migratory movements of Black-throated Blue Warblers. In the Fall of 2023, Patricia joined the Love lab and is co-supervised by Dr. Emily McKinnon at the University of Manitoba. Patricia will be examining the costs and benefits of an urban lifestyle in the context of climate change, specifically focusing on Snow Buntings living in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Her primary objective is to explore the impact of urbanization and rising temperatures on the breeding decisions and reproductive success of Snow Buntings. Welcome to our team Patricia!

Alysha Riquier

MSc Student
2022 - Present

With experience working with a variety of species, Alysha joined the Love lab in the Fall of 2022 with a focus on breeding Snow buntings, co-supervised by Dr. François Vézina at the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR). With a keen interest for conservation, Alysha will be examining how variation in weather affects arthropod emergence which then is expected to drive flexibility in the breeding synchronization of Snow buntings. She will be using and further contributing to the long-term breeding and migratory Snow bunting dataset collected at East Bay Island since 2007. Alysha is ultimately aiming to determine whether buntings have the capacity to keep pace with climate change in a rapidly changing Arctic. Welcome to the team Alysha!

Samuelle Simard-Provençal (co-supervised w/ Dr. Emily McKinnon)

MSc Student
2022 - Present

Sam joined our lab in the Fall 2022 and is arriving with a background as a bird bander. She is an active bander in British Columbia, and enjoys working very closely with a  range of birds across taxa to examine moult and plumages. With a broad interest in all things ornithology, Sam has narrowed down her research interest to movement ecology and will be examining the movement of Snow Buntings as a continuation and expansion of the work done by co-supervisor Dr. Emily McKinnon. Sam will primarily be working with several populations of Snow Buntings in south eastern and maritimes Canada to take a closer look at their wintering movement and how this relates to weather conditions and sex. To investigate the movement of such a nomadic species, the motus wildlife tracking system will be the key to tracking these birds. Using radio tracking technology in areas with a strong network of motus towers will ideally allow for spatial connectivity mapping of buntings in their non-breeding range. Sam is additionally working on building a network of Snow Bunting banders internationally to further look into the connectivity of the species at a global scale. Welcome to the team Sam!!

Rebecca Jardine (co-supervised w/ Dr. François Vézina)

MSc Student
2022 - Present

Rebecca will be joining our lab in the Fall of 2022 and is arriving with lots of experience and interest in all thing’s birds. Rebecca will be examining the thermal, behavioural and fitness responses of warming Arctic temperatures on snow buntings at East bay island, co-supervised by long-time bunting collaborator and energetic physiology expert, Dr. François Vézina. Specifically, starting in the summer of 2022, Rebecca will be field-testing predictions from an upcoming paper by Vézina-Love post-doctoral fellow Dr. Ryan O’Connor which used a thermal polygon approach to predict that snow bunting’s chick rearing performance will be severely impacted by even moderate temperature increases due to climate change. To examine this question, Rebecca is using novel Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) thermal tags and in-house receivers developed by the Vézina-Love teams to measure real-time changes in body temperature in response to elevated ambient temperature as parents work hard to raise their nestlings in an ever-warming Arctic. Rebecca’s work at our low Arctic East bay island site can then be compared with data from Dr. Vézina’s high Arctic site at Alert, Nunavut. Welcome to our collective teams Rebecca!

Emily MacDonald (co-supervised w/ Dr. Christina Semeniuk)

MSc Student
2022 - Present

Emily joined the Love and Semeniuk labs in the Fall of 2022 from McGill University working on an honours project with long-time Arctic collaborator Dr. Kyle Elliott examining whether the cost of reproduction affects feather quality in thick-billed murres. Emily is working on a highly integrative project looking at the physiological and behavioural responses of Arctic-breeding common eiders to heat stress. More specifically, Emily is using non-invasive measurements of heart rate to estimate metabolic costs of incubating under increasingly warm temperatures faced by Arctic-breeding seabirds. Emily will then be using these physiological responses to estimate (and then measure) at what temperatures incubation behaviours become interrupted as eiders begin to face heat stress and a loss of metabolic control over their body temperature. Such an exciting, highly topical and wonderfully collaborative project. Welcome to our labs Emily!

Rachel Dow (co-supervised w/ Dr. Christina Semeniuk)

MSc Student
2024 - Present

Rachel joined the Love and Semeniuk labs in Fall 2024 and is incredibly passionate about various topics within avian research. Rachel has previously worked with several shorebird species in Southern New Brunswick. Through this work, she has gained valuable experience and skills, and she is excited to expand her skills with her master’s project which will focus on the behaviour of snow buntings in Iqaluit, Nunavut. She will examine the behavioural flexibility of this Arctic species and how that might help individuals adapt to an urban landscape. Welcome to the team Rachel!

Elena Tranze-Drabinia

MSc Student
2024 - Present

Elena joined the Love lab in Fall 2024 after completing an honour’s project and working as a research coordinator in Dr. Kyle Elliott’s Arctic Ecology Lab at McGill University. Elena is continuing the Arctic research theme by joining the snow bunting team based out of Iqaluit for her Master’s project. The project uses novel RFID thermal tag technology and ambient temperature loggers to examine how snow buntings respond to heat stress within the context of climate change and increasing urbanization. Elena hopes to estimate how increasing temperatures, and urban sprawl will affect the cold adapted avian residents of Iqaluit and provide a framework of how this may affect other Northern communities as animals and people move poleward. Welcome to our team Elena!

Emily Archambeault

Undergraduate
2022 - Present

Emily joined the lab in Fall 2022 as an undergraduate student as a part of the University of Windsor’s Outstanding Scholars program. She is interested in how humans interact with the environment, and especially affecting the Arctic as it rapidly changes.Emily trained to conduct multiple types of immunoassays for quantifying physiological traits that represent energetic demand in Arctic seabirds with lab manager Chris Harris. These assays are aimed at quantifying individual- and population-level variation in physiological mechanisms in these at-risk species to provide us both with that mechanistic links between environmental variation and performance/fitness, as well as biomarkers that provide early-warning signals of problems that population censuses would be too slow to detect. Given her quick learning and expert techniques, Emily is now leading our in-lab assay work across multiple species. Thanks for your amazing ongoing work Emily! We are all very glad we get to work together.