Welcome to the lab!

We study the causes and consequences of animal behaviour within the context of species conservation. Our focus is largely on the role of individual behavioural variation and environmental variation plays in affecting fitness and disease outcomes for bats and caribou. We use a range of contemporary statistical analyses to test competing hypotheses that span a broad range of ecological scales. The implications for our work are wide-ranging and our goals are to contribute to the development of theory and methods, while also contributing to the conservation and management of species at risk.

As a lab group, we prioritize lab culture and shared responsibility for our collective learning. We encourage students to work with lab mates and collaborators, while I provide mentorship for students throughout the entire research process. Given our lab dynamics, it is also common for incoming students to seek additional mentorship from more senior students or post-docs in the lab group. Some of our group activities include weekly lab meetings, monthly writing groups, joint lab meetings with other labs in our department, and departmental seminars. We also like to have fun in the lab and in the field - see what we've been up to by following our lab Instagram page.

If our research and lab environment sounds like something you are interested in, please get in touch anytime! If you are interested in hearing about the lab and want to get in touch, that's great, but please make sure you send me information about yourself (who are you? what are you doing now?), an up to date CV, and an unofficial transcript. There are no guarantees that I will have openings at the time you get in touch.
As a lab, we want to acknowledge all the achievements in the lab over the last year. 2024 was a big year for the lab! We had three new graduate students start (Welcome Shayla, Rose, and Genevieve!), two graduate students defend (congrats Arya and Teya!), our first paper from a student in the lab was published late in the year (congrats Allegra!), and a slew of scholarships were awarded to graduate students, including the NSERC CGS-M and CGS-D (congrats Teya and Allegra!) and the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (congrats Alex and Shayla!). We're excited for what 2025 will bring as we are expecting a number of papers to come out in early 2025, some more new faces to join the lab, and a few folks are going to be moving on as well.

Stay tuned and for more content from the lab, you can follow me on Bluesky at @qwebber.bsky.social and on Instagram @uog_web_lab.