Hub scientist, Biodiversity Program

“Each time she is underwater, Camille is amazed by the exceptional diversity and high complexity of coral reefs. Understanding the relationship existing between coral reef communities and their habitat, and building statistical models to reflect this complexity are thus challenging and exciting tasks for her.” 

Camille started her studies in marine ecology after obtaining an engineering diploma in Food and Life Sciences from AgroParisTech (Paris, France). She completed her Master’s degree at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC), Paris 6, with her thesis on coral reef fish assemblages of the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia, under the supervision of Pr R. Galzin (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Perpignan). She became interested in ecological modelling during her Master’s degree.

Camille participated in underwater visual census of corals and fish on the atoll of Tikehau, Tuamotu Archipelago, and she used some existing data on ten other atolls to build statistical models of fish diversity from habitat characteristics. She also developed her interest in population and behavioral ecology of elasmobranchs during her Masters, when she was involved in a census of great white sharks in South Africa.

Back to tropical coral reefs, Camille completed her PhD on the early life stages of coral reef fish at the UPMC, being based at the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD) of Noumea, New Caledonia, under the supervision of Professors D. Ponton and R. Galzin. She organised and conducted field work, monitoring fish recruitment on artificial reefs or performing underwater visual fish census in shallow-water habitats. During her PhD, Camille developed some predictive models of juvenile fish species richness and abundance from remotely-sensed habitat characteristics, in collaboration with the remote sensing team of IRD Noumea lead by S. Andréfouët. After completing her PhD (and enjoying a well-deserved holiday!), Camille went back to Noumea for a two-month post-doctoral contract with S. Andréfouët, to continue working on predictive modeling of fish diversity patterns using remote sensing. She was then offered a CERF post-doctoral position at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, working with Mark Meekan, Corey Bradshaw and Julian Caley.