Dr. Matthew C. Yates
I obtained my honours undergraduate degree under Dr. Jeff Hutchings (Dalhousie University), where I studied local adaptation and the effects of interbreeding with domestic conspecifics on alternative reproductive phenotypes in endangered Atlantic Salmon populations. My PhD research (Concordia University, under Dr. Dylan Fraser) used field experimentation and meta-analysis to test how population-level genetic parameters (genomic diversity, census/effective population size, etc.) affect fitness in natural populations in novel environments. I translocated brook char to novel, previously fishless pond environments that represented gradients of ecologically important environmental characteristics; I then examined the relative importance of habitat, population-level genomic diversity, and effective population size on subsequent survival, growth, and the release of phenotypic plasticity in translocated individuals. I also conducted meta-analyses examining if source census size (Nc) affects survival in translocated populations and if a population's effective size can be used to predict Nc.
This research led to an interest in developing molecular methods to indirectly estimate/monitor abundance in natural populations of conservation concern. As a post-doctoral researcher at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) under the supervision of Dr. Alison Derry (UQAM) and Dr. Fraser (Concordia University), and in collaboration with Dr. Cristescu (McGill University), I evaluated the application of eDNA to monitor organism abundance. To test this, we used whole lake experiments involving brook trout populations in Canadian national parks located in the Rocky Mountains. We extended physiological models of allometric scaling to develop the novel hypothesis that eDNA production scales non-linearly with body mass according to a power-function, predicting that the distribution of individual mass within a population will affect population-level eDNA production. We found substantial evidence supporting this hypothesis, demonstrating that incorporating allometric scaling into models substantially improved correlations between eDNA concentration and brook trout abundance especially compared to traditional metrics such as density and biomass. This represents a substantial development in improving the correlation between organism abundance and eDNA, yet has broad implications for many projects that utilize eDNA (e.g. community metabarcoding). We also investigated the utility of eRNA to monitor the physiological status of organisms.
I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Windsor working under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Heath (University of Windsor) and Dr. Nick Mandrak (University of Toronto). I will be working with CIGLR, in collaboration with GENFISH, to investigate the application of eDNA to monitor population ecology. I will also continue to investigate the application of eRNA to monitor the physiological responses of organisms to environmental conditions.