Jennifer Fisher - phd candidate

Investigating the impacts of intraspecific diversity on whole-lake ecosystems in Alaska

Jennifer joined the lab in May 2024 after completing her master's and undergraduate degrees at UBC. Jennifer’s PhD project centres on an experiment conducted as part of an international collaboration in Alaska. The experiment involves nine lakes where three-spine stickleback were native, but extirpated due to invasive northern pike. In 2019, these lakes were treated with rotenone to remove the invasive northern pike, and the food webs were reset with the addition of evolutionarily divergent lineages of three-spine stickleback. Jennifer is investigating the impacts of the stickleback lineages (benthic and limnetic types) on the whole lake ecosystems. She is interested in how the aquatic communities have been impacted by the fish stocking, as well as how ecosystem function has been affected. She plans to do seasonal comparisons in the experimental lakes to investigate to what extent the stickleback ecotypes’ dietary niches change between summer and fall.

Cosupervision avec Andrew Hendry, Department of Biology, McGill University