Welcome to the Rooney Lab
The focus of our lab is on aquatic ecology, restoration ecology, and landscape ecology. We look at the relationships between plants, invertebrates, and birds with their abiotic environment; both in terms of ecosystem properties and processes. In particular, we focus on the response of these biotic communities and their environmental correlates to human disturbance.
We are recruiting talented, bright, hard working, self-motivated students with solid communication skills. If this describes you and you are interested in the type of research questions we address, please look at our Biology Department program requirements and contact Dr. Rooney: rrooney(at)uwaterloo.ca
Right now, we have an opportunity open for a PhD. student interested in working with a comprehensive dataset on nearly 100 wetlands from Alberta, including bird, invertebrate and vegetation community data, as well as environmental covariates. This project affords the opportunity to publish extensively. The successful applicant will have experience with multivariate analysis of community data in ecology. Experience with R software is a plus.
In addition, we are seeking a MSc. student to work with vegetation community data to develop biomonitoring tools for Albertan wetlands. Experience with R software is a plus.
News
- July 31, 2017Invertebrate bioindicators are too much work: new research from Rooney Lab
New research published from the Rooney Lab highlights the weak relationship between aquatic macroinvertebrate community structure and surrounding land use in prairie pothole wetlands. Macroinvertebrates are one of the most popular bioindicators used in freshwater ecosystems, but efforts to develop bioindicator tools with these taxa in wetlands has generated mixed results. Recent Grad from the Rooney Lab, Jenny Gleason, suggests that the strong environmental filter of wetland hydroperiod (i.e. permanence class) may be responsible.
- July 26, 2017*New* Fully Funded PhD Opportunity
PhD Opportunity: Linking Land and Water - Modeling causes and consequences of nutrient loadings to Lake Erie with incomplete information.
Exciting opportunity for a Ph.D. student to join the Lake Futures: Enhancing Adaptive Capacity and Resilience of Lakes and their Watersheds project, funded under the Global Water Futures.
- May 23, 2017New Paper on Phragmites and birds - free to download until July 8th
A new paper by Rooney Lab PhD student, Courtney Robichaud, was just published in the Journal for Great Lakes Research! This article explores some of the more subtle effects of invasion by Phragmites australis on the wetland bird community. Through a comparison with a study done in 2001/02, her work suggests that a time lag exists between the initial invasion and the realization of some of these effects. You can access it free at this link until July 8th, 2017.
Abstract:
