From McGill University [Université McGill](CA)
3.21.24
Katherine Gombay
Media Relations Office
katherine.gombay@mcgill.ca
Office Phone: (514) 398-2189
Mobile Phone: (514) 717-2289
Biodiversity loss may accelerate ecosystem destabilization.
What maintains stability within an ecosystem and prevents a single best competitor from displacing other species from a community? Does ecosystem stability depend upon the presence of a wide variety of species, as early ecologists believed, or does diversity do the exact opposite, and lead to instability, as modern theory predicts?
Resolving a long-standing debate among ecologists
A new study from McGill University and the Max Planck Institute and published recently in Science suggests an answer to this question that has stood unanswered for half a century among ecologists.
The researchers approached the question of population growth using a model that, so far, had not been used in this context – though it aligns with conventional wisdom and the way that people have traditionally modelled individual growth (from birth to maturity).
The researchers used data about population abundance, growth and biomass from a variety of species – including insects, fish and mammals – from across the globe, collected over the past 60 years. Their results, based on extensive analysis, suggests that, contrary to contemporary ecological theory, species diversity leads to ecosystem stability, as early ecologists had believed.
Growth in populations slows with density
“While nearly all prior theory assumes that populations grow exponentially, there is growing evidence that species actually follow a slightly different course, one in which exponential growth continuously slows down. It’s a bit like the law of diminishing returns in economics.” says Ian Hatton, a research associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at McGill University and the corresponding author on the paper.
“What’s amazing is that such a small difference in population growth can have such a large effect on community interactions, completely reversing the predictions from decades of theory.”
Dangers of disturbing the balance
Their findings raise alarming questions about the potential large-scale impacts of biodiversity loss.
“This research is becoming increasingly urgent given the current rates of species extinction and loss of biodiversity,” says Hatton. “In addition to better aligning theory with data, the model makes an unsettling prediction: losses in biodiversity can further destabilize an ecosystem and prevent them from recovering after a disturbance.”
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All about
McGill University [Université McGill] (CA)
With some 300 buildings, more than 38,500 students and 250,000 living alumni, and a reputation for excellence that reaches around the globe, McGill has carved out a spot among the world’s greatest universities.
Founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1821, McGill University [Université McGill] (CA) is a leading Canadian post-secondary institution. It has two campuses, 11 faculties, 11 professional schools. McGill attracts students from over 150 countries around the world.
McGill University is a public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV, the university bears the name of James McGill, a Scottish merchant whose bequest in 1813 formed the university’s precursor, University of McGill College (or simply, McGill College); the name was officially changed to McGill University in 1885.
McGill’s main campus is on the slope of Mount Royal in downtown Montreal, with a second campus situated in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, also on Montreal Island, 30 kilometres (19 mi) west of the main campus. The university is one of two universities outside the United States which are members of The Association of American Universities, alongside the University of Toronto (CA), and it is the only Canadian member of the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) within the World Economic Forum.
McGill offers degrees and diplomas in over 300 fields of study, with the highest average entering grades of any Canadian university. Most students are enrolled in the five largest faculties, namely Arts, Science, Medicine, Engineering, and Management. Its student body is the most internationally diverse of any medical-doctoral research university in the country. In all major rankings, McGill consistently ranks in the top 50 universities in the world and among the top 3 universities in Canada. It has held the top position for the past 16 years in the annual Maclean’s Canadian University Rankings for medical-doctoral universities.
McGill counts among its alumni and faculty Nobel laureates and Rhodes Scholars, both the most of any university in Canada, as well as a number of billionaires, a former Governor General of Canada, and a number of foreign leaders. McGill alumni also include Academy Award winners, Grammy Award winners, Emmy Award winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, and many Olympians with Olympic medals. The inventors of the game of basketball, modern organized ice hockey, and the pioneers of gridiron football, as well as the founders of several major universities and colleges are also graduates of the university.
Notable researchers include Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the atomic nucleus and conducted his Nobel Prize-winning research on the nature of radioactivity while working as Professor of Experimental Physics at the university. Other notable inventions by McGillians include the world’s first artificial cell, web search engine, and charge-couple device, among others.
McGill has the largest endowment per student in Canada.
Research
Research plays a critical role at McGill. McGill is affiliated with Nobel Laureates and professors have won major teaching prizes. According to The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, “researchers at McGill are affiliated with about 75 major research centres and networks, and are engaged in an extensive array of research partnerships with other universities, government and industry in Quebec and Canada, throughout North America and in dozens of other countries.” McGill has one of the largest patent portfolios among Canadian universities. McGill’s researchers are supported by the McGill University Library, which comprises 13 branch libraries and holds over six million items.
Since 1926, McGill has been a member of The Association of American Universities, an organization of leading research universities in North America. McGill is a founding member of Universitas 21, an international network of leading research-intensive universities that work together to expand their global reach and advance their plans for internationalization. McGill is one of 26 members of the prestigious Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), which acts as an intellectual community within The World Economic Forum to advise its leadership on matters relating to higher education and research. It is the only Canadian university member of GULF. McGill is also a member of the U15, a group of prominent research universities within Canada.
McGill-Queen’s University Press began as McGill in 1963 and amalgamated with Queen’s in 1969. McGill-Queen’s University Press focuses on Canadian studies and publishes the Canadian Public Administration Series.
McGill is perhaps best recognized for its research and discoveries in the health sciences. Sir William Osler, Wilder Penfield, Donald Hebb, Brenda Milner, and others made significant discoveries in medicine, neuroscience and psychology while working at McGill, many at the University’s Montreal Neurological Institute. The first hormone governing the Immune System (later christened the Cytokine ‘Interleukin-2’) was discovered at McGill in 1965 by Gordon & McLean.
The invention of the world’s first artificial cell was made by Thomas Chang while an undergraduate student at the university. While chair of physics at McGill, nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford performed the experiment that led to the discovery of the alpha particle and its function in radioactive decay, which won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. Alumnus Jack W. Szostak was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.
William Chalmers invented Plexiglas while a graduate student at McGill. In computing, “MUSIC/SP”, software for mainframes once popular among universities and colleges around the world, was developed at McGill. A team also contributed to the development of “Archie”, a pre-WWW search engine. A 3270 terminal emulator developed at McGill was commercialized and later sold to Hummingbird Software. A team has developed digital musical instruments in the form of prosthesis, called “Musical Prostheses”.
Since 2017, McGill has partnered with the University of Montréal [Université de Montréal] (CA) on Mila (research institute), a community of professors, students, industrial partners and startups working in AI, with over 500 researchers making the institute the world’s largest academic research center in deep learning.
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