Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Northern Research Supplement

The long-term goal of research funded by my NSERC grants is to determine ecological and evolutionary factors that influence success and impact of parasitic organisms on their hosts. Parasites live in or on other living organisms, and derive some or all of their energetic requirements and/or nutrients from those other organisms, termed hosts. How good parasites are at doing this, and how good they are in getting themselves or their offspring to new hosts, determines their success or fitness in an ecological and evolutionary sense. My students and I are particularly interested in whether changes to arctic habitats and ecosystems (either natural or anthropogenic) have effects on success of parasites and their impacts on host wildlife. Two direct areas of research are whether climate change will result in changes in ectoparasite comnunities of seabirds and whether endoparasites of seabirds hasten bio-accumulation of contaminants.