**Title** Spatially Heterogeneous Perturbations Homogenize the Regulation of Insect Herbivores **Authors** Eric Harvey and Andrew S. MacDougall **Related publications** The American Naturalist, Vol. 186, No. 5 (November 2015), pp. 623-633 Published by: The University of Chicago Press for The American Society of Naturalists Article DOI: 10.1086/683199 Article Stable URL: [http://www.jstor.org.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/stable/10.1086/683199][1] **Acknowledgements** First of all I would like to thank my advisor Andrew MacDougall without whom none of this would have been possible. Thank you for all these whiteboard meetings where science and life philosophy merged together into stimulating discussions. Especially, thank you for attempting at teaching me the subtlety of English writing, and most importantly for your patience in constantly reminding me that scientific writing is not about stating a string of unrelated interesting facts, but about making connections among them. Although far from being perfect, I hope this thesis will meet your expectations. Thanks to Karl Cottenie for listening to my long gibberish ramblings about statistics and metacommunities, and still being able to make out something out of it. Thanks to Kevin McCann and Alexander Smith for kindly answering my questions throughout this long-winded process. Special thanks to the rare Charitable Conservation organization, in Cambridge, for allowing me to play with a piece of your precious land, and for all the logistical and technical help. Community-based local conservation organization like rare are an essential part of any longterm regional sustainability plan, and I wish the organization all the best for the always too uncertain future. Sometime graduate students are perceived as the front line of scientific research production. However, this is overlooking the people really doing the physical work in the background; research assistants. I am deeply indebted to Rachel Derbyshire, Caitlin Paterson, April ClyburneSherin, Cara Bulger and Felicia Syer for the amazing work on the field and in the lab, spending countless hours repeating the same things over and over, without ever being too grumpy. The past three years have been a crazy ride, and certainly not the most social part of my life. In these circumstances it is essential to have people on whom you can count when it’s time to close the computer and have a real life. For that I thank warmly Philip Bertrand, Josée-Anne Otis, Francis Caron, Stefan Schneider, Maude Tremblay, Sarah French, Julian Heinzelmann, Julie Van Bijllaardt, Katrine Turgeon, Allan Debertin, Paula Estay, and all the McCann lab; you guys all rock very hard! For you Colette Ward, je n’ai pas besoin d’en dire long car tu sais déjà que je ne serais pas où je suis présentement sans toi. Tu es mon inspiration et ma confiance pour aller toujours plus loin, et c’est ensemble que nous entreprendrons la prochaine étape de notre périple, principalement basé sur la découverte, l’amour de la vie et l’inaltérable soif d’apprentissage. To my beloved family, de qui je suis trop loin, depuis trop longtemps, je ne peux qu’exprimer à quel point je suis fier de faire partie de votre tribu. Vous êtes mes racines, et tant que vous êtes là, je sais que je peux continuer d’avancer, car le chemin du retour reste toujours tracé sous mes pas. Please note that for consistency the first person ‘I’ is used throughout this thesis, however ‘I’ necessarily include the essential support of all the above-mentioned people. [I dedicate this thesis to all the dreamers out there producing the raw material necessary to pursue any comprehensive scientific endeavor. Too often, as scientists, we forget that a complex web of irrationality, commonly referred to as passion, is in fact the primary motor of any quest for objective wisdom.] [1]: http://www.jstor.org.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/stable/10.1086/683199