The Lewis Lab - University of Victoria & University of Alberta
Dr. Mark Lewis is Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Biology at the University of Alberta. He has pioneered the development of models for mountain pine beetle dynamics and risk and has been a long-time collaborator on TRIA networks. He is an enthusiastic participant in the network and appreciates the great benefit of being part of a truly interdisciplinary research group that TRIA-FoR provides. His overall goal is to undertake top level quantitative modelling and analysis that connects directly to important questions in ecology and management, and the collaborative structure of TRIA-FoR is a key ingredient.
The Lewis group’s primary focus in TRIA-FoR is to analyze MPB outbreak potential under different scenarios of lodgepole pine resiliency (Activity 2), to model spatial spread-risk of eastwardly spreading MPB (Activity 3) and to model the effect of the full overwintering temperature profile on MPB fitness, and whether these effects are pronounced in novel habitats mechanistic models (Activity 4). As a co-PI on the previous TRIA-Net network, Lewis had the opportunity to recruit and train some exceptional HQP (e.g., Devon Goodsman, Dean Koch, Melodie Kunegel-Lion, and Nathan Marculis), and much of the work in TRIA-FoR builds upon their results (link to theses).
Dr. Micah Brush is a postdoctoral fellow in the Lewis Research Group at the University of Alberta in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, broadly interested in theoretical and spatial ecology. He is currently working on modelling mountain pine beetle dynamics and has other projects in macroecology and biodiversity. He completed his PhD in physics at UC Berkeley with Prof. John Harte studying how ecological disturbance affects macroecological patterns, and before that did his MASt (Part III) at Cambridge University, and his undergrad in physics at Simon Fraser University. Micah is also involved in other issues in higher education, and as a graduate student served as a co-coordinator for Respect is Part of Research, a peer-led sexual harassment/sexual violence prevention program that reached hundreds of incoming graduate students each year in STEM. Outside of academics, Micah enjoys hiking, singing, and baking, and is very happy to be curling again now that he is in Edmonton.
Currently, Micah is working on the spatial modelling of eastern spread-risk of mountain pine beetle (TRIA-For Activity 3.3). He is developing a new mathematical model for this purpose, building on previous modelling work undertaken via a previous research network (TRIA-Net), which combines mountain pine beetle dynamics and forest structure and tree resilience. This model captures important aspects of mountain pine beetle biology, such as their local aggregation when attacking trees and their need to attack in large numbers to overcome tree defenses, and additionally describes pine forest growth. Micah’s mathematical approach will allow modelling of pine beetle populations as it spreads eastward. This type of modelling is important to answer questions such as how resilient trees, whether naturally occurring or managed, will affect the spread of pine beetle, how long it will take forests to recover after infestation, and how management strategies will affect mountain pine beetle population dynamics in the long term. The longer-term goal is to incorporate this modelling into software development based on the SpaDES platform and to share results with end-users and stakeholders interested in management and outcomes.
Xiaoqi Xie is an MSc student in Applied Mathematics and a member of the Lewis Research Group. She started her position in September 2021. Xiaoqi completed her BSc degree at the University of Manitoba, with a major in Statistics Actuarial and a minor in Business Management. As an undergrad student, Xiaoqi studied sampling under the supervision of Dr. Brad Johnson at the University of Manitoba, and to share results with end-users and stakeholders interested in management and outcomes.
Currently Xiaoqi is looking forward to work on modelling MPB outbreak potential under different scenarios of lodgepole pine resiliency (TRIA-For Activity 2.3). She is taking courses and preparing by surveying the literature in this area and reading key papers. Her goal is to develop models to address the proportion of resilient trees required to slow MPB population dynamics sufficiently to provide additional time for control measures to be deployed and become effective. She expects to use methods from statistics, machine learning (e.g., Bayesian belief models) and dynamical systems for this research. The longer-term goal is to communicate the results to end-users and managers who can incorporate the results into making predictions and choosing management strategies.