Solving conflicts between humans and animals aim of new researcher

She’s studied stingrays in the Cayman Islands and caribou in the Canadian boreal forest, but now a predictive ecologist will use her expertise to better understand the ecosystems of the Great Lakes.

“The Great Lakes are an amazing ecosystem to work in,” said Christina Semeniuk, the newest faculty member of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research. “And GLIER is really a great place because we’re so multidisciplinary here. This is a perfect institute to be in.”

Dr. Semeniuk joined the University of Windsor as an assistant professor in January after a stint as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Calgary. Originally from Montreal, she earned her undergraduate degree in ecology from Concordia University, a master’s degree in biology with a focus on behavioural ecology from Simon Fraser University, as well as a PhD from SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management.

Finding the best solutions to conflicts between humans and wildlife is the ultimate goal of Semeniuk’s work. By investigating the cumulative effects of multiple stressors on the adaptive decisions of animals, she’s able to explore patterns, make demographic predictions and recommendations about the best habitats for wildlife to survive.

And just because some animals move and survive in new habitats doesn’t necessarily mean they’re living in ideal conditions, she said.

“Good animals enjoy bad habitats,” she said. “You can actually end up with areas that are no good for certain species, because animals make trade-offs that can be maladaptive in novel or changed environments.”

Much of her work relies on using computer modelling to make predictions about how animals will survive in certain environments. In a virtual world, she can manipulate environmental conditions and create avatars that represent certain animals to see how they would adapt to various ecosystems.

“It has its origins in artificial intelligence,” she said of the system. “These avatars have the ability to sense and interpret their environment, and they can interact with one another. You have to make sure that they are acting as naturally as possible.”

In the past Semeniuk was part of a team that studied the impacts of tourism on stingray populations in the Cayman Islands, and she has been using her computer modeling work to make predictions about caribou populations in west central Alberta. Now that she’s in the Great Lakes region, she plans to turn her attention to studying yellow perch populations in Lake Erie, as well as Atlantic salmon and lake trout in Lake Ontario.

Because her work can be applied to so many different situations, she’s looking forward to establishing new working relationships with a wide variety of campus colleagues.

“My work is very multidisciplinary and is never done in isolation,” she said. “Since I arrived I’ve been immersing myself in Great Lakes issues, and the people here at GLIER have been great about helping me get situated and familiarized with their work.”

Semeniuk’s work on caribou was recently featured on David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things. Click here and scroll down to the “Virtual Caribou” tab to see a video about her research.

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