Dr. Pedro Peres-Neto

Education

University of Toronto (PhD)
Université de Montréal (PDF)

Keywords: aquatic ecology, fish biology, spatial ecology, community ecology, biodiversity, biostatistics, quantitative ecology.

Animals, plants and other organisms vary so enormously that no two places on the planet contain the exact same species or environment.  The community quantitative ecology lab seeks to unravel the multiple mechanisms behind these complex patterns that dominate in nature. We carry out large-scale field surveys and utilize experimental, quantitative and theoretical approaches tostudy a central question in ecology: Why are species where they are? To tackle this question, our lab links conceptual and empirical research across a broad number of communities including bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish, insects, mammals and plants. Much as astronomers cannot perform planetary experiments,ecologists cannot easily manipulate most biodiversity patterns, such as species diversity or patterns of species co-existence, because these patterns occur across spatial scales, from a few centimeters to thousands of kilometers. Therefore, in a way similar to astronomers, we use statistical and mathematical models to understand the importance of many processes underlying biodiversity patterns.

Morales-Castilla, I., Pearse, W., Davies, T.J. and Peres-Neto, P.R. 2017. Combining phylogeny and co-occurrence to improve single species distribution models. Global Ecology and Biogeography (in press)

Smith, A., Houde, A., Neff, B. and Peres-Neto, P.R. 2017. Effects of competition on fitness-related traits.  Oecologia 183: 701-713.

Monteiro, V., Paiva, P. and Peres-Neto, P.R. 2017.  A quantitative framework to estimate the relative importance of environment, spatial variation and patch connectivity in driving community composition.  Journal of Animal Ecology 86:316-326.

Henriques-Silva, R., Pinel-Alloul, B. and Peres-Neto, P.R. 2016. Climate, history and life-history strategies interact in explaining differential macroecological patterns in freshwater zooplankton. Global Ecology and Biogeography 25:1454-1465.

Peres-Neto, P.R., Dray, S. and ter Braak, C. 2016. Linking trait variation to the environment: critical issues with community-weighted mean correlation resolved by the fourth-corner approach. Ecography 40:806–816.

Davies, T.J., Urban, M.C., Rayfield, B., Cadotte, M.W. and Peres-Neto, P.R. 2016. Deconstructing the relationships between phylogenetic diversity and ecology: a case study on ecosystem functioning.  Ecology 97:2212-2222.

Mazel, F., Davies, T.J., Georges, D., Lavergne, S., Thuiller, W. and Peres-Neto, P.R. 2016. Improving phylogenetic regression under complex evolutionary models.  Ecology 97:286-293.

Lee, W.-S., Mangel, M. and Peres-Neto, P.R. 2016. Environmental integration: Patterns of correlation between environmental factors, early life decisions, and their long-term consequences.  Evolutionary Ecology Research 17: 1-19.

Peres-Neto, P.R. 2016. Will technology trample peer review in ecology? Ongoing issues and potential solutions. Oikos 125: 3-9.

Complete list at Google Scholar

https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=Ids2ILYAAAAJ&hl=en

Member of Editorial Boards

Ecography
Methods in Ecology and Evolution
Global Ecology and Biogeography
Vice-President of the International Society of Biogeography (IBS)
Member of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Sciences (http://qcbs.ca/)