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Research philosophy
With my research, I try to combine my two formal trainings: biology
(PhD research project: local and an regional processes in a zooplankton
metacommunity) and statistics (Master of Statistics). My field of
expertise is the intersection of community ecology and
multivariate data analysis.
My research principle: KISS (keep it super simple, or stupid
simple, whichever you prefer) anytime and anywhere. This goal,
however, is very hard to reach.
Community Ecology
- For my masters degree in Biology, I studied the fish and
crustacean community structure in the estuary of the Beneden
Zeeschelde.
- For my PhD dissertation, I worked on the interconnected
ponds of the nature reserve "De Maten" (Belgium). Because
these ponds are highly interconnected through overflows and
rivulets, not only local interactions between the different
components are important, but also the regional process of
exchanging individuals might influence local community
structure. I tried to disentangle the relative effect of local and
regional processes using a combination of observational data,
large-scale whole-ecosystem manipulations, and in situ enclosure
experiments.
 
- My postdoctoral work will use the methodologies developed
during my PhD work, and expand it to other data sets,
ecosystems, and geographical locations. Using meta-analysis,
I will look across systems whether the relative importance of
local or regional processes in determining community
structure vary systematically with geographical location,
size of study area, number of communities studied, occurrence
of strong environmental gradients, etc.
- I will also study the possible integration of community and
genetic theory, on the level of data analysis, basic concepts
and processes.
Statistics
- For my masters degree in Statistics, I compared different
multivariate methods in analysing community structure.
- For my PhD dissertation, I integrated different ways of
incorporating space into ecological and genetic multivariate data
analysis. I am currently developing a statistical toolbox in S (S-plus
and R) to make these techniques available in a uniform environment.
- I also wrote a short comment article on the problem of
pseudoreplication in large-scale ecological experiments, spurred by an
article of Oksanen (2000).
- I am currently working on a test for saturation curves that
takes into account more information than the standard test.
- dialog
presentation, dialog poster,
dialog
introduction
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