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About me

Andrew (Drew) Villeneuve (he/him/his) is a global change marine ecologist interested in working with data across scales of biological organization to better understand the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems and the people that depend on them. He specifically seeks to combine empirical data of organismal physiology and distribution, environmental and extreme event data, and fisheries data into models of ecosystem dynamics under climate change.

Drew uses a mixture of statistical, laboratory, and field techniques to build inference across these scales of ecological organization. He currently focuses on 1) the effects of heatwaves on eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) survivorship, 2) sensitivity of intertidal fisheries and aquaculture to climate change in Madagascar, 3) sensitivity of the live seafood supply chain to warming, and 4) modelling transient effects in marine foundation species range shifts. Ultimately, his research seeks to confront assumptions about how ecologists model ecosystem responses to climate change, as well as supporting the climate resilience of understudied small-scale fisheries critical to human subsistence.

Andrew earned his bachelor’s in Biology from Bowdoin College in 2016 and his master’s in Environmental Conservation from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2021. At UMass Amherst, he worked in the Marine Global Change Ecology lab with Dr. Brian Cheng understanding the role of local adaptation in driving intraspecific trait variation and climate sensitivity of the marine predatory gastropod Urosalpinx cinerea. He was a 2021 Knauss Marine Policy Fellow with NOAA Fisheries, where he supported efforts to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge from Inuit groups into an international agreement to prevent unregulated fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean, and developed communication materials about NOAA Fisheries surveys for the public and Congress.

When not working on his research, Andrew likes to spend his time outdoors hiking, biking, kayaking, diving, getting lost, and taking nature walks.

My dynamic CV (coded in R!)