Three Projects in flight. Below: the question each one is answering, the collaborators, and roughly when to expect the paper. The findings themselves stay with the manuscripts.
How does the way an albatross forages translate into its vital rates and how its population grows?
Foraging behaviour and demography usually live in separate literatures. This project bridges them: linking GPS-tracked foraging trips in wandering albatrosses to long-term survival and reproductive outcomes from a 50-year mark–recapture record, in a single Bayesian framework. The aim is to close the loop from individual decisions at sea to life-history outcomes.
TARGET
Current Biology
STATUS
Finalisation of the manuscript
SUBMISSION
Summer 2026
TEAM
CEBC-CNRS, WHOI, CU Boulder
WHY IT MATTERS
If we can show that fine-scale behaviour translates predictably into demographic outcomes, we have a route to early-warning indicators for a population long before its numbers start to fall.
A joint demographic-and-evolutionary projection of the Crozet wandering albatross under CMIP6 climate scenarios. The work brings three normally separate literatures into one model: climate-ensemble projections, quantitative-genetic adaptation, and capture–mark–recapture demography . We ask whether plasticity and microevolution together are enough for the population to persist this century through foraging behavior adaptation.
TARGET
Global change biology
STATUS
Drafting
SUBMISSION
Autumn 2026
TEAM
CEBC-CNRS, WHOI, CU Boulder
Can wandering albatrosses evolve fast enough to keep up with a changing Southern Ocean?
WHY IT MATTERS
Evolutionary rescue has been tested mostly in short-lived species, where the answer is tractable in a few generations. For long-lived seabirds, the question is genuinely open, and the conservation stakes are largest. This is among the first attempts to ask it rigorously in a real, deeply-monitored system.
What are the demographic vital rates underlying Antarctic toothfish, and what shapes them?
The Brooks Lab generates one of the most detailed otolith-ageing pipelines for Antarctic toothfish anywhere. I am building the demographic layer on top of it: a Bayesian age-structured framework that estimates survival, growth, and recruitment, asks which life stage drives population viability, and probes whether early-life ocean conditions leave a lasting demographic signature in adult cohorts.
TARGET
Conservation Biology
STATUS
Model development
SUBMISSION
Winter 2026
TEAM
CU Boulder
WHY IT MATTERS
Toothfish anchor the Ross Sea food web and one of the most valuable Southern Ocean fisheries. Converting otolith bench work into a demographic layer is the missing piece that lets the lab’s data speak directly to CCAMLR stock assessment and to the effectiveness of the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area.