Mary O'Connor

Mary I. O'Connor is a Professor in the Zoology Department and Director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. O'Connor earned a BS in Aquatic Ecology from Brown University (2000), and a PHD from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2008, followed by a postdoc at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), prior to joining UBC in 2011.

Major research interests include understanding ecological change. Particular focal areas are metabolic scaling with temperature change, community ecology, biodiversity change, biological information in ecological systems and marine coastal ecology particularly in seagrass ecosystems. We use lab experiments, field observations, structured sampling as well as data synthesis and modelling to test hypotheses that advance ecological theory.