Murray Humphries
Associate Professor of Wildlife Biology
Director of Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment (CINE)
Institut nordique du Québec (INQ) McGill Chair in Northern Research
Member of the Quebec Center for Biodiversity Science (QCBS)
murray.humphries(at)mcgill.ca

I'm from Brandon, Manitoba, and since 2003, I'm a teacher and researcher at McGill University. I've been a NSERC Northern Research Chair between 2006 and 2013 and have become the director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment (CINE). I'm currently teaching Natural History of the Vertebrates (Fall, WILD-307) and Mammalogy (Winter, WILD-350) and I'm a co-instructor of Wildlife and Fisheries Management (Fall, WILD-401). I currently supervise a diversified lab including undergraduate, MSc, PhD, and post-doctoral students.

I am the Institut nordique du Québec McGill Chair in Northern Research - Wildlife conservation and Traditional Food Security. This chair focuses on the protection and sustainable development of northern Quebec’s natural resources. In particular, we study how resource development and other forms of environmental change impact the abundance and health of northern wildlife populations and their contribution to traditional food security. 

​I am the McGill co-lead, with Stan Boutin of the University of Alberta, of an NSERC CREATE graduate training program in Environmental Innovation. Through this program we are currently training graduate students with knowledge of and relationships with industry, government, and aboriginal organizations required for career-long contributions to culturally-, environmentally- and economically-sustainable resource development in northern Canada.

I lead the community-partnered, interdisciplinary research project Wildlife, Environmental Change, and Local Indigenous Food Systems (WECLIFS) that focuses on the traditional and country food systems of northern Quebec, including the Cree region of Eeyou Istchee and the Inuit region of Nunavik, and incorporating wildlife biology, well-being, and governance research.

Research Interests

We believe that understanding the ecological implications of processes by which animals acquire and assimilate energy from the environment, and allocate assimilated energy between maintenance, growth, and reproduction, ultimately requires field studies that integrate measures of energy supply and expenditure, under known environmental conditions, and in situations where behaviour, reproduction, and survival can be documented.

​We try better understanding, predicting and monitoring environmental change impacts on northern wildlife and traditional food security in Canada by working with many northern partners, including federal and provincial governments, private corporations, and indigenous organizations, to design and implement locally relevant research at the interface of scientific and traditional ecological knowledge.

Current Research

​1) Wildlife Biologging Across Space and Time
We aim to capitalize on recent advances in biologging tools to advance knowledge regarding the role of physiology and behaviour in shaping the abundance, distribution and coexistence of wildlife populations across environmental gradients. We use different biologging techniques, including external tags, trail cameras, tissue analysis, acoustics, etc., to monitor movement, activity, and energetic of various wildlife species across different landscapes, from the boreal forest of southwestern Yukon to the coastal waters of Baffin Island.

​2) Environmental Change, Wildlife & Traditional Food Security
In collaboration with northern partners and indigenous communities, we are interested in understanding, predicting and monitoring impacts of environmental change on traditionally harvested wildlife species. Our approach combines community-based participatory research with studies of climatic and environmental determinants of the distribution and abundance of traditional food and furbearing species.

Publications

Representative Publications
  • Studd, E. K., Landry‐Cuerrier, M., Menzies, A. K., Boutin, S., McAdam, A. G., Lane, J. E., & Humphries, M. M. (2019). Behavioral classification of low‐frequency acceleration and temperature data from a free‐ranging small mammal. Ecology and evolution, 9(1), 619-630.
  • Charry, B., Marcoux, M., & Humphries, M. M. (2018). Aerial photographic identification of narwhal (Monodon monoceros) newborns and their spatial proximity to the nearest adult female. Arctic Science, 4(4), 513-524.
  • Brunet, N. D., Hickey, G. M., & Humphries, M. M. (2017). How can research partnerships better support local development? Stakeholder perceptions on an approach to understanding research partnership outcomes in the Canadian Arctic. Polar Record, 53(5), 479-488.
  • Humphries, M. M., Studd, E. K., Menzies, A. K., & Boutin, S. (2017). To everything there is a season: summer-to-winter food webs and the functional traits of keystone species. Integrative and comparative biology, 57(5), 961-976.
  • Brunet, N. D., Hickey, G. M., & Humphries, M. M. (2016). Local participation and partnership development in Canada's Arctic research: challenges and opportunities in an age of empowerment and self-determination. Polar Record, 52(3), 345-359.
  • McMeans, B.C., K.S. McCann, M.M. Humphries, N. Rooney, A.T. Fisk. 2015. Food Web Structure in Temporally-Forced Ecosystems. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 30(11), 662-672.
  • Humphries, M.M., K.S. McCann. 2014. Metabolic ecology. Journal of Animal Ecology, 83, 7-19.
  • Brunet, N., G. Hickey, M.M. Humphries. 2014. The evolution of local participation and the mode of knowledge production in Arctic research. Ecology and Society, 19, 69-84.
Other Representative Contributions
  • Kuhnlein, H.V. and M.M. Humphries. 2017. Traditional Animal Foods of Indigenous Peoples of Northern North America: http://traditionalanimalfoods.org/. Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment, McGill University, Montreal.
  • Brammer, J. and M.M. Humphries. 2015. Mammal ecology as an indicator of climate change. In Climate Change: Observed Impacts on Planet Earth. 2nd Ed. T. Letcher, Ed., Elsevier, New York.

​Click here to view a list of current publications