PI: Rachel Germaincv - SSE profile Associate Professor Canada Research Chair, Tier 2 Dept. Zoology & the Biodiversity Research Centre, UBC PhD University of Toronto, 2016 BSc University of Guelph, 2010
Mia Tayler Waters, M.A. (PhD candidate) Mia joined the lab as a PhD student in September 2019, bringing in a coevolution background from her MSc at UC Santa Cruz. She is interested in understanding how coevolution and coexistence of species across trophic levels and dynamic landscapes influence the structure of biodiversity.
Jessica Kowalski (PhD candidate)
Jessica started a MSc in September 2020 before switching up to a PhD. She is interested in understanding the spatial and temporal mechanisms that support species coexistence and how these mechanisms (or the break down of these mechanisms) interact to influence biodiversity and the processes of community assembly and disassembly.
William (Jia-Ang) Ou (PhD candidate)
Will joined the lab as a PhD student in January 2021. He is broadly interested in diversity and the evolution of complexity. In particular, he is interested in exploring how feedbacks between ecology and evolution can create opportunities for species coexistence.
Aspen Unger (MSc student)
Aspen joined the lab as an MSc student in September 2024. They are interested in coexistence and competitive interactions in plant communities, specifically regarding biodiversity and exotic plant invasion. Aspen is exploring how these interactions may change in an evolving climate and increase our understanding of the factors involved in resistance to invasion.
Ellie Hector (PhD student)
Ellie arrived in Vancouver September 2025, coming in with an interest and background in plant phenology following from her BSc research in the Bontrager lab at U of T. She is testing how phenology is being altered by global change, and will spend part of her PhD doing an exchange in Dr. Gremer's lab at UC Davis (fun!).
Kendra Melching (NSERC USRA)
We first got to know Kendra as a superstar BIOL230 student, who is currently pursuing a BSc in Applied Animal Biology. She has interests in has a particular interest in sustainable agricultural biotechnology in the context of environmental change, and is working with Ellie in California for the 2026 field season.
Alumni (grads/postdocs)
Jawad Sakarchi (PhD, 2019-2026)
Jawad's PhD focused on resolving the interplay between ecology and evolution, notably, how coexistence theory can help us better understand coevolution, local adaptation, population genetics, and life history evolution. He is currently an NSERC Postdoc with Oscar Godoy & Jenn Sunday. website
Megan Szojka (MSc, 2018-2020)
Megan's thesis explored the relationship between biodiversity and dispersal through a combination of greenhouse and field experiments. Her work aims to improve our understanding of how competition, abiotic sorting, and dispersal interact across scales in real landscapes. Current position: Postdoc in Bernhardt Lab, post-PhD in Shoemaker lab
Tess joined the lab in 2021 to embark on a giant 2 year project testing how temperature affects eco-evolutionary dynamics. Current position: Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph
Chelsea's research focuses on meta-ecosystems: the movement of organisms, matter, and information, and how this affects local ecosystem dynamics. Her background is as a community ecologist to explore the consequences of community assembly and composition on ecosystem processes and functioning. Current position: Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University
Alumni (undergrads/technicians)
Catherine Laver (BSc thesis student, 2025-2026)
Catherine joined the lab in May 2025 as an undergraduate honours student in Biology. She is interested in how plants respond to changing environmental patterns and is starting a project on the effects of variation in drought timing relative to germination. She has also helped with several lab projects, mainly assisting with Will’s experiment on spatial structure and coexistence with flour beetles. She is currently doing a USRA in the Michaletz lab.
Seth Perez (work learn)
Seth is currently pursuing her third year as a undergrad biology student at UBC. She joined the Germain lab in July 2024 as a Work Learn student and continued this role through the 2025 academic year. Seth aided in several projects including the coexistence and coevolution of beetles, frequently proposed hypothetical tiktoks for the lab, and really loves pancakes.
Gloria Rahgozar (directed studies student)
Gloria is pursuing her undergraduate degree in Biology. She joined the Germain lab as a Work Learn student in January 2024, working with Mia Waters on population dynamics through coevolution and coexistence of beetles. In September 2024, she began her Directed Studies, comparing the behavioural adaptations of beetles (through foraging and fecundity) in the presence and absence of competitors.
Joshua Dyer (BSc thesis student)
Joshua joined the lab as a NSERC USRA student in 2023. He is currently assisting other lab members with their projects that investigate topics of species coevolution, coexistence, and dispersal on flour beetles and grasses. He just received $2100USD worth of duckweed to start a research project that determines whether the outcome of coevolution depends on pre-existing differences between species. Current position: MSc in Moore lab UBC Forestry
Andrea Jackman (summer researcher)
Andrea started working in the lab in May 2022 with a NSERC USRA grant. She is interested in evolutionary ecology and joined the lab for the summer to gain lab experience. She aims to learn more about and participate in ecology research this summer. Current position: PhD at the University of Southern California
Zhoujie Wu（directed studies and summer researcher）
Zhoujie is an undergraduate student of biology major and participated in the Biology Undergraduate Diversity in Research program in July 2022, where he helped to complete the lab work and studied the effects of the environment on the cannibalism behavior of flour beetles. He is now leading a directed studies project to parameterize population models.
Safia Thiam (work learn and assistant)
Safia is an undergraduate student in biology. She joined the lab as part of the Biology Undergraduate Diversity Research program in March 2022 and helped with a species coexistence project--she loves flour beetles enough to be spending the next year with us. She is interested in computational biology and is looking forward to exploring ways of visualizing beetle coexistence data.
Tahlia Read (directed studies/honour's thesis)
Tahlia completed a directed study project investigating how dispersal between different quality habitats affects interspecific competition outcomes. She is currently writing up her paper for publication, and loved beetles so much she returned for a year-long thesis on beetle behaviour.
Melanie Tan (undergraduate lab technician)
Melanie joined the lab in May 2021 on a UBC SURE fellowship and is now working as a work-learn student for the 2021/2022 school year. She worked with Tess on an evolutionary rescue project in Tribolium castaneum (i.e., flour beetles).
Graydon Gillies (honour's thesis)
Graydon is an undergraduate Honours Thesis student. He is working with Jess on a research project that is examining how variability in the timing of drought influences demographic stochasticity in the California grass species Bromus hordeaceus. Current position: PhD in the Carissa Brown's lab (Memorial), post-MSc in Eckert lab (Queens)
Aishwarya Subramanian (directed studies)
Aishwarya joined the lab as a Directed Studies student in January 2021. She is interested in understanding how animal movement influences connectivity of plant communities within a landscape, and how movement is rewired by wildfire. Current position: MSc at York University
Savanna Skinner (UBC Summer Undergraduate Research Assistant)
Savanna joined the lab to work with us in California, but due to covid, she has quickly pivotted to local experiments testing hypotheses associated with ant/aphid mutualisms, with a population ecology twist.
Kelley Slimon (directed studies student) Kelley joined the lab in 2018 as a work learn student before staying on for a directed studies project. Kelley tested the evolution of dispersal, dormancy, and their covariance along environmental gradients. In doing so, Kelley clarified the ecological value of each trait, and found that dispersal and dormancy are not simply alternate forms of bet hedging. Current position: PhD with Agrawal lab at Cornell
Kately and Jenny are working together to test how animals link plant populations in space, dispersing seed and redistributing energy and nutrients. They are collecting animal poops, germinating the seeds they contain, and then incinerating 🔥 them.
Mackenzie has been working in the lab since the summer of 2017, and is currently a collaborator on a project disentangling local adaptation to the biotic vs. abiotic environment. Current position: PhD in Angert Lab
Research technicians: Genevieve Ke (2019 - current: Msc student, Material Engineering), Dennis Chiu (2018)
