Blaise Petitpierre

I am interested in bio- and phylogeography. For this purpose, my studies focus on the environmental niche of invasive plant species. Thanks to GIS and statistic tools, I can quantify the environment tolerated by a species and then detect it in the geographic space, resulting in its potential habitat. Niche conservatism is one of the pivotal assumption for such GIS studies used to prevent biological invasions. The idea is to test if the niche in the native range is conserved in the invasive range and if not, to detect ecological or evolutionary factors involved in such a shift

Apr 09 -
PhD under the supervision of Antoine Guisan, University of Lausanne

Oct 08 - Mar 09
Research assistant with Claire Arnold and Antoine Guisan, University of Lausanne

Jul 08 - Sep 08
Internship under the supervision of Christa Mulder working on soil-feedback interactions with invasive plant species, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Oct 06 - Jun 08
Master of Science in Evolutionary and Conservation Biology, University of Lausanne. Thesis topic: Ecological and Phylogeographical Approach of a Biological Invasion: Prunus serotina, a Case Study. Supervised by Guillaume Besnard, Olivier Broennimann and Antoine Guisan.

Oct 03 - Sep 06
Bachelor of Science in Biology, University of Lausanne