ACADEMIC FORMATION:
(2011- ) Post-doc – University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison,
Wisconsin, USA)
(2010-2011) Post-doc – Université Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens,
FRANCE)
Research project: “Impact of landscape fragmentation on species
and functional diversity in north western European forests.”
(2005-2009) PhD in Ecology – Codirection between Université de
Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke CANADA) and Montpellier SupAgro (FRANCE)
Research project: “From plant functional traits to plant communities
towards a prediction of species relative abundances through a
maximum entropy model.”
(2003-2004) M.sc degree in “Tropical environment and biodiversity
valorization”-
Université
des
Antilles-Guyane
(Guadeloupe
island,
FRANCE)
Research project at the “Ecology of French Guiana tropical forests”
laboratory: “Intraspecific variability of photosynthetic traits in the
tropical tree species Eperua falcata (Caesalpiniaceae).”
(1999-2002) B.Sc degree in Biology - Université Henri Poincaré (Nancy,
FRANCE)
GENERAL INFORMATION:
I’m a plant ecologist. My past (PhD project) and present (postdoc)
research relate to two aspects of plant ecology: community and
functional ecology. More precisely, I’m interested in describing and
predicting patterns of species and functional diversity in response to
various environmental and land use changes.
PhD project: Predicting community structure from plant life history
traits: a maximum entropy model.
The objectives of my PhD were: 1) to study the relationships between
the composition of traits found in different communities and underlying
environmental gradients; 2) to determine the capacity of a recently
developed model to predict the relative abundance of species in
different environment based on these relationships; 3) to use this model
to determine a list of parsimonious traits for future research.
Previous Post-doc project: Impacts of fragmentation on forest
functional diversity in Northern France. Does a functional diversity
area relationship (FDAR) exist?
Using structural equation modeling and a large data set, I assessed (i)
the impact of forest fragmentation on plant functional diversity and (ii)
the existence of a general relationship between area forest fragments
and functional diversity, as a parallel to the classical species area
relationship (STAR).
PUBLICATIONS:
Submitted papers
Sonnier G., Navas M-L, Fayolle A., Shipley B. Quantifying trait selection
driving community assembly: A test in herbaceous plant communities
under contrasted land use regimes. Submitted to Oikos.
Accepted papers
Jamoneau A., Sonnier G., Chabrerie O., Closset-Kopp D., Saguez R., GaletMoron E. D. Decocq G. (In press). Interacting drivers of plant species
assemblages in forest patches among contrasted changing rural
landscapes. Journal of Ecology. Available online.
Shipley B., Laughlin D.C., Sonnier G., Otfinowski R. (In press). A strong
test of a maximum entropy model of trait-based community assembly.
Ecology. Available online.
Sonnier G., Shipley B., Navas M-L. (2010). Plant traits, species pool and
the predictions of species relative abundances: a maximum entropy
approach. Journal of vegetation science, 21, 318-331.
Sonnier G., Shipley B., Navas M-L. (2010). Quantifying relationships
between traits and explicitly measured environmental gradients in early
successional plant communities. Journal of Vegetation Science, 21,
1014-1024.
Coste S., Roggy J-C., Sonnier G., Dreyer E. (2010). Irradiance-elicited
phenotypic plasticity of leaf traits is similar in 12 tropical-rainforest tree
species irrespective of their successional status. Functional Plant
Biology, 37, 342-355.
ORAL PRESENTATIONS (*speaker):
*Laughlin D.C., Otfinowski R., Sonnier G., Shipley B. Trait-based
community assembly: A strong test of the maximum entropy model.
Annual meeting of the Ecological society of America, 2010, Pittsburgh
(Pennsylvania, USA).
*Sonnier G., Shipley B., Navas M-L. Effet du stress et des perturbations
sur la composition fonctionnelle des communautés végétales de début
de succession : des patrons aux prédictions? Colloque annuel du centre
d’étude de la forêt (CEF), 2009, Gatineau (Québec, CANADA)
Sonnier G., *Shipley B., Navas M-L. From plant traits to plant
communities: Towards predictive community ecology. Annual meeting of
the Ecological society of America, 2008, Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA).
*Sonnier G., Navas M-L., Shipley B. Annual meeting of the British
ecological society, 2007, Glasgow (UK).
*Sonnier G., Navas M-L., Shipley B. Le formalisme du maximum
d’entropie: un outil nouveau pour prédire l’abondance relative des
espèces dans les communautés végétales. Poster au colloque Ecoveg 3,
2007, Bordeaux (FRANCE).