Lab News & Kudos!
Lab Updates
In January, 3 new interns jointed the lab and are working on continued development of SWIM, the water data collaboration platform. Welome to Amirhossein, Joan and Tahera who are graduate students in Computer Science. They will be modifiying our database, creating a new front and back end to the platform, redoing the discussion forum and streamlining data upload/download functionality to the platform.
Regulation of Nif genes and the possible role of Molybdenum-limitation, plus potential compensatory responses by transcribing iron (Fe/Fe) and vanadium (Fe/V) forms continues to be of interest to understand and identify thresholds that lead to N-limitation and blue-green algal dominance. Previous research by Susan Anderson showed that microcystins are above drinking water and contact guidelines in a number of shallow lakes east of Calgary.
The other research area that continues to attract interest from the public concerns Didymo ("Rock Snot") in Alberta streams and rivers. We have just conpleted our citizen science partnership with Trout Unlimited. Students in my lab produced Didymo sampling kits and Trout Unlimited distributes them to anglers who then collect samples for us. The samples were returned for Didymo confirmation via microscopy and we have produced a map of Didymo observations going back a little more than a decade, which you can view here: https://arcg.is/01XbOf. Our reseach and collaboration with Parks Canada was profiled during late July, 2010 by over 100 newspapers, plus local and national television networks. Interviews were done with Peter Mansbridge for The National as well as Ziya Tong for Daily Planet, Discovery Channel Canada's flagship daily science magazine. Publications in England and India also covered the news. Didymo continues to attract the public's interest, and our research on genetic affiliations of different Didymo strains should help provide some needed context regarding Didymo's apparent invasion into Alberta around 2004. We will begin a citizen science project in collaboration with Trout Unlimited in Alberta and the USA to crowd-source samples to better understand the distribution of Didymo along eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Most recently, we began a partnership with Trout Unlimited to have anglers crowd-source potential Didymo samples in southern Alberta.
Last fall, the outcome of a global collaboration by about two dozen scientists to develop a global, function-based ecosystem typology was published in Nature: Function-Based Ecosystem Typology. The typology presents a framework to organize Earth's ecosystems into freshwater, marine, terrestrial and transition categories. Descriptions organize ecosystems into a classification that reflects functional responses to change and management and provides a novel framwork to place all of Earth's ecosystems into a unifying context to guide ecosystem management policy from local to global scales. The topology was adopted by the Internation Union for the Conservation of Nature at the 2020 World Conservation Congress and there is a useful web-based resource that can support teaching here: Student-friendly Ecosystem Typology.
Finally, stay tuned for updates on our research on microplastics and AMR in wastewater treatment processes and receiving environments. I expect to be able to highlight new publications in the coming months.
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Kudos to Colby Whelan!
Kudos to Colby who successful (March 2018) with his grant application to the Alberta Conservation Association's Biodiversity Grants Competition.
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Kudos to Analisa Lazaro-Cote!
Kudos to Analisa who recently (February 2017) was awarded a NSERC Queen Elizabeth II doctoral scholarship.
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Kudos to Susan Anderson!
Kudos to Susan who recently (February 2017) was awarded a Graduate Performance Award from the Department of Biological Sciences for high performance in her MSc program.
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Kudos to Analisa Lazaro-Cote!
Kudos to Analisa who recently (September 2016) was awarded second place in the Graduate Student poster competition at the 43rd annual Canadian Ecotoxicity Workshop for her poster entitled "The effect of municipal wastewater effluent on the stress response of fish in the Bow River, Calgary, Alberta".
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Kudos to Susan Anderson!
Kudos to Susan Anderson who was successful in her scholarship application to the Alberta Conservation Assciation's Biodiversity Grants competition. Susan has just finished 4 rounds of sampling 25 lakes in southern Alberta for her research on nutrient drivers, sulphate and molybdate competition for nitrogen-fixation, and toxin (microcystin) induction in blue-green algal in shallow prairie lakes. You can learn more about Susan and her research on her page.
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Kudos to Analisa Lazaro-Cote!
Kudos to Analisa who was awarded (April 2016) a Queen Elizabeth II scholarship for her research on the impact of treated municipal wastewater effluent on the secondary stress response of native minnows. Analisa has just finished her second field season.
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Kudos to Dana Poscente!
Finally, kudos are due to Dana Poscente who received an honourable mention for her presentation in the Biological Sciences annual undergraduate symposium (April 2016), which celebrates research projects of the Department's undergraduates each year and for being offered admission to Oxford University's MSc program in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management.
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Kudos to Analisa Lazaro-Cote!
Kudos to Analisa who recently (April 2015) was awarded an Alberta Conservation Association Biodiversity Grant for her proposed research to evaluate impacts of municipal wastewater effluent on the secondary stress response of native minnows like longnose dace. Analisa will begin her fieldwork in May 2015. .
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Kudos to Stella Yip!
Kudos to Stella who recently (April 2013) was awarded a NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award for summer 2013 - these are highly competitive awards. Stella will be collecting Didymo samples and starting lab work to look at gene regulation in blooming and non-blooming Didymo populations. She will also be helping Krista with Didymo sampling throughout the eastern slopes of southern Alberta to help Krista with her Didymo genetic fingerprinting project.
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Kudos to Erick Elgin!
Kudos to Erick who recently (April 2013) won a Students Union Teaching Award. These are highly competitive awards that require nomination by a TA's students for consideration.
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Kudos to Krista Larsen!
Kudos to Krista who recently spring 2013 received an Alberta Conservation Association Challenge Grants in Biodiversity award to support with her reserach on Didymo genetics. Krista will be sampling Didymo from Alberta, Vancouver Island and possibly Alaska to determine if blooming and non-blooming Didymo have distinct genetic 'fingerprints'.
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Kudos to Haley Tunna!
Kudos to Haley who recently (January 2013) received a Queen Elizabeth II scholarship, which is provided by the Province of Alberta to reward the high level of achievement of students pursuing graduate studies in Alberta.
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Kudos to Joyce Evans!
Kudos to Joyce who recently published her undergraduate thesis project in Scientifica. Joyce measured a variety of endocrine disrupting compounds in the Oldman River over ~400 km of river length, and related the presence of EDCs to skewed sex ratios and incidence of intersex testes in Longnonse Dace.
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Kudos to Haley Tunna & Erick Elgin!
Kudos to Haley and Erick for recently being awarded Alberta Conservation Association Challenge Grants in Biodiversity to begin April 2012. They were chosen from an applicant pool of 35 individuals. The funding will support field costs associated with their thesis research on longnose dace population size and mixing (Haley) and zooplankton effects on the clearwater phase and macrophyte growth in shallow prairie lakes (Erick).
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Kudos to Erick Elgin!
Kudos to Erick for recently being awarded a Department of Biological Sciences Entrance scholarship. The Faculty of Graduate Studies provides funds to support graduate education and the Department uses some of these for entrance scholarships to recognize outstanding achievement to date.
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Kudos to Lisa Duke!
Kudos to Lisa on a number of fronts. Lisa was successful with her Alberta Conservation Association Challenge Grants in Biodiversity grant proposal submitted during November, 2009. Lisa also was a recipient this spring (2010) of a Queen Elizabeth II scholarship for academic achievement during her MSc program. Finally, Lisa recently won the 'best oral presentation' award during the recent (mid May) Graduate Students Asociation Conference, which highlights the best graduate student research being conducted on campus and promotes the development of the graduate student community.
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Kudos to Cecilia Chung!
Cecilia was also successful with her Alberta Conservation Association Challenge Grants in Biodiversity grant proposal submitted during November, 2009. In addition to that, Celcilia won the "best poster' award for the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology research cluster at the recent Biological Sciences Conference, our departmental celbration of trainee accomplishments during the previous academic year.
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Kudos to Joyce MacNeil!
Congratulations to Joyce MacNeil, who won the 'best oral presentation' award at this year's Biological Sciences Conference. The oral presentations show-case research conducted for undergraduate thesis projects during the previous year in a conference format. Check out one of Joyce's pictures (Sibbald Lake) in the pano at the top of this page.
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Kudos to Tonni Knox-Hiitola!
Congratulations are in order to Tonni for being awarded an NSERC USRA for summer, 2010. The undergraduate summer research awards are very competitive awards provided to allow undergraduates to gain valuable experiential learning in a research laboratory.
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