April 9, 2026: IRES Faculty Seminar with Dr. Kaitlyn Gaynor

Talk summary:

Given the ongoing loss of biodiversity and the expansion of the global human footprint, it is critical and urgent to understand how human disturbance shapes ecological communities, and how these changes then feed back to affect people. The growing human footprint poses a particular challenge for large-bodied, wide-ranging terrestrial mammals, whose space needs often bring them into contact, and conflict, with people. An understanding of behavioral plasticity and its constraints can allow us to understand and predict patterns of animal movement and activity in response to human presence, infrastructure, and land use change. This talk explores how human disturbance shapes risks and resources for wild animals, and how responses of animals can have implications for ecological dynamics and human societies. Such knowledge can inform more effective biodiversity conservation and human-wildlife coexistence on an increasingly crowded planet.

Bio:

Dr. Kaitlyn Gaynor is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Zoology and Botany at the University of British Columbia, and is a Faculty Associate in IRES. Research in Kaitlyn’s lab at UBC examines the effects of human activity on large terrestrial mammals, with emphases on the behavioural responses of animals to human presence, the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on predator-prey and other species interactions, and the socio-ecological dynamics of conservation and coexistence. Her work involves large-scale data synthesis and meta-analyses, and local field studies in North America, Africa, and Asia