About my research
I am proud to be a research generalist in Biology, interested in many aspects of ecology and evolution. I am most interested in research that has application to conservation management (e.g., insect responses to climate change) or forensic entomology. And I'm most interested in research involving insects, just because they're awesome.
Insect responses to climate change
Insects are proving themselves smarter than many Canadian politicians by responding to climate change. Using collections of butterflies in Canada I am estimating species' rates of northward range shift over the 1900's, and whether there are any patterns underlying the variation in species' rates of shift. Preliminary results suggest the majority of Canadian butterfly species have shifted north over recent decades, consistent with insect responses elsewhere in the world.Mobility of Canadian butterflies
Ryan Burke conducted research on the relative mobility of butterfly and skipper species in Canada. I supervised Ryan in Dr. Kerr's lab. We asked butterfly enthusiasts across Canada and northern USA to rate the relative mobility of species based on your own field experience. Our manuscript arising from this project has been accepted for publication in Biodiversity & Conservation.
Online citizen science
The internet is allowing research to advance in many ways, from freely available databases to online tools that facilitate analyses. I am interested in how the Internet is facilitating citizen engagement in ecology. Traditional one-way information-flow sites where citizens access information from professional entomological scientists or societies are useful, but additional opportunities exist for sites that facilitate multiple-direction information-flow from citizens to scientists and among citizens. I am reviewing these opportunities between changing my son's diapers (he expresses his opinion about my research in his diaper contents).Forensic entomology, DNA barcodes, and CarrionNet
The insects upon a body often provide the most accurate method of determining minimum time since death. In order to estimate minimum time since death based upon insect evidence, you must first determine what species of insect are present. I am developing an online database called CarrionNet that will list all of the species documented as being associated with carrion (rotting meat) around the world, as well as the genetic loci useful in their species identification.Open Dinosaur Project
There are a lot of dinosaur bone measurements published in dusty old papers, but not yet a comprehensive database compiling them all. A team of paleontologists in the UK have decided to change that. They have created the Open Dinosaur Project, a citizen science project where dinosaur enthusiasts find relevant papers, enter their data (or verify others' data), and feel good about their contribution to science. It's just one of many examples of citizen science allowing grand projects to succeed with little funding and short timeframes, and one I'm happy to have contributed to.Daphnia pulex life-history traits
My Masters research was conducted on Daphnia pulex in the lab of Dr. David Innes (Biology Dept., Memorial University of Newfoundland). Together we completed two successful research projects. One survey found no evidence of the bacterial symbiont Wolbachia among many clonal isolates from various ponds in the Great Lakes area of North America. Wolbachia is a very cool bacterium that can alter its hosts' life-history strategies to propogate more of itself. Our other research project quantified the effects of crowding on reproduction in six different genotypes of D. pulex. Our results emphasize the importance of genotype x environment interactions in life-history research. Furthermore, our results cast doubt on the integrity of freshwater effluent testing methods utilized by Environment Canada and their international equivalents which determine effluent toxicity based on a single genotype of D. magna. The publications resulting from my Daphnia work are available on my publications page.