Ariel Greiner

University of Toronto | U of T · Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Theory and empirical work suggest that coral reefs may exhibit alternative stable states of coral versus macroalgal dominance. However, it is unclear how dispersal of coral and macroalgae among reefs might impact this bistability and the resilience of the coral-dominated state. We develop a mathematical model to investigate how reef cover dynamics...

Aim The aim was to determine reef connectivity and future coral cover levels under global scenarios of coral bleaching loss and potential recovery. Location Global coral reefs. Time period Present‐day to 2100. Major taxa studied Scleractinian coral. Methods We used a global coral larval dispersal model that describes population connectivity amo...

Paz‐Vinas, Jensen et al. (2021) comment on data and methodological limits of Millette, Fugère, Debyser et al. (2020)—some affect a small proportion of our data sets and analyses and others need to be tackled more generally. These points do not refute our main conclusion of no strong signal of human impacts on COI variation globally.

Paz-Vinas et al. (2021) comment on methodological and data-related limits of our paper (Millette et al. 2020), which affect a small proportion of our datasets and analyses. These points do not refute our conclusions. We address their comments and support the call for the development of best practices for future macrogenetics research.

This study empirically quantifies dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 establishment and early spread in Canada. We developed a transmission model that was simulation tested and fitted in a Bayesian framework to timeseries of new cases per day prior to physical distancing interventions. A hierarchical version was fitted to all provinces simultaneously to obtain...

Coral reefs are among the many communities believed to exhibit regime shifts between alternative stable states, single‐species dominance, and coexistence. Proposed drivers of regime shifts include changes in grazing, spatial clustering, and ocean temperature. Here, we distill the dynamic regimes of coral–macroalgal interaction into a three‐dimensio...

For biologists, creating your first publishable mathematical model often occurs in grad school. While many new modellers understand what is the desired end product, a “finished model”, few students may be aware of the challenges that could hinder achieving that goal - at least we were not. Now as graduate students with significantly more experience...

Coral reefs are among the many communities believed to exhibit regime shifts between alternative stable states, single-species dominance, and coexistence. Proposed drivers of regime shifts include changes in grazing, spatial clustering, and ocean temperature. Here we distill the dynamic regimes of coral-macroalgal interaction into a three-dimension...

Human impacts on genetic diversity are poorly understood yet critical to biodiversity conservation. We used 175 247 COI sequences collected between 1980 and 2016 to assess the global effects of land use and human density on the intraspecific genetic diversity of 17 082 species of birds, fishes, insects and mammals. Human impacts on mtDNA diversity...

Human impacts on genetic diversity are poorly understood yet critical to biodiversity conservation. We used 175,247 COI sequences collected between 1980 and 2016 to assess the global effects of land use and human density on the intraspecific genetic diversity of 17,082 species of birds, fishes, insects, and mammals. Human impacts on mtDNA diversity...

Microfluidic devices are used for many different types of experiments across the medical, ecological and evolutionary disciplines (Park et al., 2003; Keymer et al., 2008; Connell et al., 2013; Hol & Dekker, 2014). For example, microfluidic devices for microbial experiments require inoculation into smaller chambers that simulate natural microbial en...

Visiting multiple locations and returning to the start via the shortest route, referred to as the traveling salesman (or salesperson) problem (TSP), is a valuable skill for both humans and non-humans. In the current study, pigeons were trained with increasing set sizes of up to six goals, with each set size presented in three distinct configuration...