Grant: Canada Research Chairs

I propose a novel and ambitious research program that will investigate how organismal energy budgets have evolved over lifes history. Specifically, I will study the evolutionary history of the relationship between metabolic rate and body size in animals and photosynthetic capacity in plants. In conjunction with large-scale data analysis, I will use simulations and mathematical modeling to understand how the evolution of organismal energetics influences ecosystem properties. A broader aim of this work is to understand how to leverage information about evolutionary relatedness to make more robust predictions about how ecosystems will respond to climate change and other threats.