Ms. Maude Baudraz

Research interests

I am a plant ecologist, interested in where plants occur and how well they perform where they are. In my Master’s thesis, I worked on predicting the distribution of plant communities’ functional characteristics with Dr Pascal Vittoz and Prof Antoine Guisan in the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. This work at the interface between biogeography and functional ecology convinced me to go further in investigating not only where plants occur, but also how they adapt to their local environment. In my PhD, I will focus on demographic processes and how they link to the position of populations within a species niche. I’m looking forward to this new challenge!

PhD Research

Proliferation or local extinction?  Exploring within species variation in demographic strategies in plants worldwide
Funded by the Irish Research Council

As demographic data requires long-term monitoring of the hundreds of individuals that generally form a population, there are very few species for which multiple datasets have been sampled at large geographical scale. Questions such as how to best manage growing populations of an invasive species, or protect a declining population of an endangered one, tend to be answered based on the observation of <5 populations. While there is no doubt that this is very precious information, we have never had the tools to assess how much individual species can actually vary in their demographic strategies, might it be over distance or time. This is what I am going to focus on in my PhD.

Particularly, I’m trying to answer questions such as:

1. Does within species variation in demographic strategies overlap with between species variation?
2. Do demographic rates vary differently in time and space?
3. Do demographic processes vary depending on the position within a species’ environmental niche?

Addressing these questions will help us to understand the accuracy of applied demographic studies done so far, and disentangle the mechanisms underlying intraspecific demographic variation from a fundamental research point of view.

Tools

The PlantPopNet international network studies the demography of P lanceolata worldwide. It includes 70 populations in 3 continents, within both the native and non-native ranges of this species
The Compadre Matrix Database inventories data from published demographic studies in an open access database. This database already contains >100 species with multiple demographic studies, and the numbers keep growing thanks to digitalization efforts, to which I participate.
PlantAlp is a project specific to my PhD. I monitor 19 populations of the plant Plantago lanceolata along a known suitability gradient in the Swiss Alps (RechAlp study area).

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed publications :

Baudraz, M. E.A., Pradervand, J-N., Beauverd, M., Burin, A., Guisan, A., Vittoz, P. (2017) Learning from model errors: Can land use, edaphic and very high-resolution topo-climatic factors improve macroecological models of mountain grasslands? Journal of Biogeography

Other scientific publications:

Urmi, E., Baudraz, M. (2016) Polytrichum aloides Hedw., Polytrichum alpinum Hedw., Polytrichum commune Hedw., Polytrichum formosum Hedw., Polytrichum juniperinum Hedw., Polytrichum longisetum Hedw., Polytrichum nanum Hedw., Polytrichum pallidisetum Hedw., Polytrichum piliferum Hedw., Polytrichum sexangulare Hedw., Polytrichum strictum Hedw., Polytrichum urnigerum Hedw.  — In: Moosflora der Schweiz, www.swissbryophytes.ch

Baudraz M., Clot F., Magnin-Gonze J. et Toni M.-M. (2015). La Tropaz et Le Bucley,
deux bas-marais de l’Ouest vaudois. Bulletin du Cercle vaudois de botanique 44: 51-56.
http://doc.rero.ch/record/258158/files/CVB_44-6.pdf

Leach, K, Kelly, R, Cameron, A, Montgomery, WI, Reid, N (2015) Expertly validated models and phylogenetically-controlled analysis suggests responses to climate change are related to species traits in the Order Lagomorpha. PLoS One 10(4): e0122267 link to journal

Kelly, R., Harrod, C., Maggs C.A. & Reid, N. (2015) Effects of Elodea nuttallii on temperate freshwater plants, microalgae and invertebrates: small differences between invaded and uninvaded areas. Biological Invasions, 17, 2123-2138. link to journal

Kelly, R., Lundy, M., Mineur, F., Harrod, C., Maggs, C., Humphries, N., Sims, D. & Reid, N. (2014) Historical data reveal power-law dispersal patterns of invasive plant species. Ecography, 37, 581–590. link to journal

Kelly, R, Leach, K, Cameron, A, Maggs, CA & Reid, N (2014) Combining global climate and regional landscape models to improve prediction of invasion risk. Diversity & Distributions, 20, 884-894. link to journal

Provan, J., Glendinning, K., Kelly, R & Maggs, C.A. (2013) Levels and patterns of population genetic diversity in the red seaweed Chondrus crispus (Florideophyceae): a direct comparison of single nucleotide polymorphisms and microsatellites. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 108, 251-262.  link to journal

For more publications and reports see: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=mrkc9JAAAAAJ&hl=en