Delphine Renard
Degrees Received
PhD, Population Biology and Ecology, University Montpellier II, France. Doctoral research conducted in the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, CNRS
Current Position
Post-doctoral fellow in Historical Ecology and Ecosystem Services. Department of Geography, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Supervisors: Jeanine Rhemtulla, Elena Bennett
Research interests
Key words: ant-plant interactions, ecosystem engineers, ecosystem engineering, historical ecology, ecosystem services
I started my research activities playing in the dirt and digging into ant nests. I found my favorite playground in the coastal savannas of French Guiana. During my Master, I dug deep into those soils to better understand the interaction between plants and seed-disperser ants. I set-up experiments in the field to follow the fate of the seeds transported by ants inside their nest and to determine conditions under which seeds can germinate and plants can benefit from ant behavior.
Seeing Guianan savannas from the air, we completely realize how surprising they are. They are covered with thousands of small round, regularly spaced, earth-mounds. In order to understand the formation of these mound-field landscapes, I have extended my research interests. From biotic interactions (e.g between living organisms), I started during my PhD to study interactions between organisms and the soil. Plants, ants, termites, earthworms and even humans share the ability to modify the soil physical and chemical properties. For this reason, they are called « soil ecosystem engineers ». It took 4 years to our team (consisting of archaeologists, archaeobotanists and ecologists) to show that the mounds are vestiges of agricultural fields, built and cultivated by pre-Columbian human engineers. My work especially showed that since raised fields were abandoned, about 600-800 years ago, they were maintained by the combined activities of non-human soil engineers, among which ants, termites, earthworms and plants.
Our collaborative research on pre-Columbian raised fields led to reflections on actual challenges for agriculture. My work was then more orientated toward applied ecology and focused on how past agricultural practices and their long-term effects on current ecological systems can be a source of inspiration to reconcile food production and biodiversity?
Today, my post-doc integrates several components of my previous work: mainly the historical perspective and the interactions between human and natural systems. Pickaxe and binocular have been replaced by computer analysis (geographic information system, statistics) to address questions at the regional (Montérégie region) and country scales in Québec, Canada. In this new playground, I am examining how the production of services provided by natural systems—as diversified as food and drinking water, flood regulation, pollination and outdoor activities—changed though time and space and what are the main drivers of these changes.
QCBS personal webpage
Publications
Renard D., Birk J.J., Zangerle A., Lavelle P., Glaser B., Blatrix R., McKey D. Ancient human agricultural practices can promote activities of contemporary non-human soil ecosystem engineers: a case study in coastal savannas of French Guiana. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 62:46-56.
Blatrix R., Renard D., Djieto-Lordon C., McKey D. The cost of myrmecophytism: insights from allometry of stem secondary growth. Annals of Botany 110:943-952.
Renard D., Iriarte J., Birk J.J., Rostain S., Glaser B., McKey D. (2011). Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today. Invited paper, Ecological Engineering 45:30-44.
Renard D., Birk J.J., Glaser B., Iriarte J., Grisard G., Karl J., McKey D. (2011) Origin of mound-field landscapes: a multi-proxy approach combining contemporary vegetation, carbon stable isotopes and phytoliths. Plant and Soil 351:337-353.
Renard D., Schatz B., McKey D. (2010). Ant nest architecture and seed burial depth: implications for seed fate and germination success in a myrmecochorous savanna shrub. Ecoscience 17, 194-202
McKey D., Rostain S., Iriarte J., Glaser B., Birk J.J, Holst I., Renard D. (2010) Pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes, ecosystem engineers, and self-organized patchiness in Amazonia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 7823-7828.
Iriarte J., Glaser B., Watling J., Wainwright A., Birk J.J., Renard D., Rostain S., McKey D. (2010) Late Holocene Neotropical agricultural landscapes: phytolith and stable isotope analysis of raised-fields from French Guianan coastal savannahs. Journal of Archaeological Science 37:2984-2994
McKey D., Elias M., Pujol B., Duputié A., Delêtre M., Renard D. (2012) Maintien du potentiel adaptatif chez les plantes domestiquées à propagation clonale. Leçons de gestion par les cultivateurs de manioc amérindiens. Revue d’Ethno-écologie 1:99-120.
Book chapter
Rostain S., McKey D., Iriarte J., Glaser B., Renard D., Birk J.J., Roux B. (2010) Les savanes anthropisées du littoral de Guyane. In: Guyane Océan (eds, D. Guiral & R. Le Guen). Editions Roger Le Guen, Garies, France.
Selected oral presentations
Renard D., Rhemtulla J., Bennett E. Ecosystem services in time and space. Annual conference of the Quebec Center for Biodiversity Science 2013. Montréal, Québec, Canada, December 2013.
Renard D., Birk J.J., Glaser B., Iriarte J., Rostain S. & McKey D. Interactions between human and natural ecosystem engineers in ancient raised fields : implications in ecological engineering. National meeting Ecologie 2010, Montpellier, France, September 2010.
Renard D., Birk J.J., Glaser B. & McKey D. Interactions of humans and natural ecosystem engineers: pre-Columbian raised-field complexes in Guianan coastal savannas. Symposium “Ecological engineering: From concepts to applications”, Paris, France, December 2009
Renard D. & McKey D. Can spectral analysis of digitized images help us distinguish spatially periodic landscapes of natural and human origin? A case study of complexes of mounds in coastal savannas of French Guiana. World Archaeological Congress 6, Dublin, Ireland, June 2008
Renard D. & McKey D. Ancient human landscape modifications affect contemporary ecosystem functioning: the ecology of an ant-plant seed dispersal mutualism in pre-Columbian raised-field complexes in seasonally flooded savannas of French Guiana. Annual meeting ATBC (Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation), Morelia, Mexico, July 2007
Work experience and other affiliations
- Assistant professor in Ecological Engineering. 2012. AgroParisTech (Paris) – University Paris Sud (Orsay), France (finish at the end of August).
- Post-doctoral position in Historical Ecology. 2011. Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, CNRS (finish at the end of August), Montpellier, France.
Award
- Second prize for my PhD thesis. Awarded by the Biological Society of Montpellier.
Complete contact information:
Current e-mail address : [email protected]
Permanent e-mail address : [email protected]
Post Doctoral Fellow
Dept. of Geography, McGill University
614 Burnside Hall, 805 Sherbrooke Street W.
Montreal QC, H3A 2K6, Canada