Welcome!
We are a plant community ecology lab at the Department of Biological Sciences, at the University of Alberta, Canada.
We aim to understand why habitats become susceptible to invasive non-native plants and how management
actions, human pressure and environmental factors affect their biological components.
In the era of global change, we try to illuminate the biodiversity and functions of rare habitats that have been poorly studied.
We work across different habitat types but much of our work focuses on grasslands. These ecosystems cover a quarter of the
global terrestrial surface but face unprecedented and enormous pressure by farming,
non-native species, a disruption of natural disturbance regimes, and climate change.
Our research centres on western Canada, the adjacent US states, Europe and Central Asia and
we tackle our research questions through a comparative framework and data mining, field observations, and experiments.
Contact us
viktoria.wagner[at]ualberta[dot]ca
University of Alberta
Department of Biological Sciences
Biological Sciences Building
Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E9
Phone: 780 492-1208
Lab news
16 April 2025
Raytha's new paper on the role of propagule pressure & soil disturbance on plant community invasibility is now published in the Journal of Vegetation Science.
11 April 2025
We are recruiting undergraduate research students for Fall 2025 (BIOL 298/398/399/498/499). Please reach out to Viktoria if you are a UofA student and interested.
10 April 2025
Congratulations to Britton for securing a Graduate Student Teaching award and Kateri for receiving a USRA and iSteam internship award!
1 April 2025
Welcome to the lab, Kaikai Fan (guest PhD student), Jennifer Chen and Alynna Sung (research technicians)!
28 November 2024
Job alert: We are looking for two summer field technicians. For details see here and here.
28 November 2024
We have one open USRA spot (summer 2025) and two open BIOL 399/499 spots (fall/winter 2025/26). For details see here.
27 November 2024
Our review paper on Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) was accepted in the Biology of Canadian Weeds Series (Canadian Journal of Plant Sciences). Great teamwork by Emily, Jessica (Cahill lab), Raytha, Kaitlin and Cedric!
25 November 2024
Congratulations to Martin for securing an AGES scholarship!
10 November 2024
We have two new lab technicians! Great to have you on board, Alynna and Sehaj!
30 September 2024
Welcome to our new lab members Anthea (undergraduate research student), Jude (MSc student) and Zhenchuan (visiting scholar)!
16 February 2024
Congratulations to Raytha for the acceptance of her PhD paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology!
15 February 2024
We are looking for a full-time, undergraduate summer field technician to help us with a field survey in southern Alberta (July 1 - Aug 15). Please send your application to Viktoria Wagner.
13 January 2024
Welcome to Danielle, our new BIOL 298 undergraduate research student this semester! Danielle will work on a seed project with Elk Island National Park.