phone: +32 (0)2 650 22 67

e-mail: Edouard.Duquesne@ulb.be

Personal website - LinkedIn

macroecology - biodiversity - global change - biogeography - invasive biology

PhD research project

Global change: from macroecology to termite nests

Supervisor: Denis Fournier

The Earth is changing at an unprecedent rate because of us, Homo sapiens (Linnaeus, 1758). Species diversity is decreasing 1000 times higher (and counting) than before human presence. These heavy changes can be encompassed under the denomination of «Global change» which has five categories: climate change, pollution, overexploitation, land use and invasive species. My project aims to assess global change impacts through four different organisms as lenses: an engineer (termites), a pest (bark beetles), a bio-indicator (sea turtles) and a sentinel of change (small carnivores). Through macroecology (Species Distribution Modelling) and more classical ecology (with fieldwork in Costa Rica and Guadeloupe and genetic analyses), our work will deep into the following questions:

1. •How will species distribution be impacted by climate change? Could these distribution shifts lead to devastating consequences for both humans and biodiversity?
   

2. •Are current protected areas sufficient to protect hotspots of key species?
   

3. •How can we enhance predictions using phylogeny or host data?
   

4. •More than species diversity, how will global change affect functional diversity?
   

Master thesis

Analysis of the edge effect on termite communities in French Guiana

Supervisor: Yves Roisin (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

Educational background

1. •2022 - ongoing: PhD thesis, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
   

2. •2020 - 2022: Master in Biology of Organisms and Ecology, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
   

3. •2017 - 2020: Bachelor in Biology, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)