Biogeographic Gradients: The Measuring Sticks of the Anthropocene

In the age of the Anthropocene, we have observed environmental shifts on massive geographic scales in response to unprecedented human activity. Researchers have been fervently documenting the global impacts of climate change on ecosystems. In the world’s oceans, microbial communities are changing in response to oxygen and nitrogen loss across the water column. On land, climate change is leading to extreme drought events in places like California, where plants that rely on flowing water are under pressure to adapt. In cities, increased urbanization is impacting the production of chemical defences that plants use to ward off insects. By examining these shifts across environmental gradients, Julia and Daniel Anstett explore the impacts of climate change on the ecosystems of the Anthropocene.

Julia Anstett completed her BASc and MEng in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Toronto. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Genome Science and Technology program. Her thesis focuses on the distributed metabolism of marine microbial communities, and how these communities and metabolic processes change across oxygen gradients. She is also one of this year’s Resident Members’ Series Co-Chairs.

Daniel Anstett did his undergraduate in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Toronto. As a Vanier scholar, he did his PhD in Chemical Ecology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Currently he is carrying out a Banting and Killam postdoc studying rapid evolution to drought in scarlet monkeyflower in the UBC Botany department.

Julia and Daniel were both junior fellows at Massey College at the University of Toronto, before becoming resident members of Green College.