New Subject Editor: Jean-Philippe Lessard

Jean-Philippe Lessard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In 2010, J.-P. received his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He then worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, based at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Finally, J.-P. was awarded the Québec Centre for Biodiversity Science Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry on research at McGill University, Canada, before joining the faculty at Concordia in 2014.

J.-P. studies ecological communities in a biogeographical context. His work investigates the factors governing the maintenance and distribution of biological diversity across spatial scales. He is particularly interested in understanding the relative contribution of local, regional and historical processes in determining the structure of ecological communities. His research integrates observational and experimental studies conducted along environmental gradients, comparative phylogenetics and null model analyses. Much of his work focuses on insects, with an inclination for ants.

Keywords

Community ecology, biogeography, macroecology, entomology, diversity gradients, species pools, null models, community assembly, structure and phylogenetics

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