By Siena Margorian, master’s student at McGill University
One of the biggest challenges to studying the American eel is the mystery surrounding its life cycle. I am currently an MSc student at McGill in the only social science laboratory in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences. My research is focused on understanding the current social-ecological fit of American eel conservation and governance in Canada. This means I want to understand how the current state of American eel ecology in our waters is interrelated with the social dynamics of those who interact with the eel.
As you can expect, social science data collection involves more conversation than getting out in the water (although I did have the opportunity to meet an eel this summer). If you have never heard of the American eel, or if you didn’t know that there were eels in Canada (no, not the electric kind), you are not alone! But you are in for quite a surprise.
Here is the illustrated life cycle of the eel I met this summer:
American eel biology and ecology are essential to understanding eel conservation and management in Canadian waters. Although the biology and life cycle of the American eel are not the central focus of my research, the questions and mysteries surrounding them are part of what makes conservation efforts so challenging. I hope that one day, we discover the secrets of the eel, but maybe they will prefer to remain mysterious…
About the Author Siena Margorian is a master’s student in the Sustainable Futures Research Laboratory at McGill University, supervised by Dr. Gordon M. Hickey. She studies the social-ecological fit of American eel conservation and governance in Canada.
By Alexandre Fuster, Postdoctoral researcher at Université de Sherbrooke and the Insectarium of Montreal
What if a snail shell could tell us not only where a snail lived, but also who it had interacted with?
This question sounds strange, but it pushed me into one of the riskiest and most exciting adventures of my PhD. Thanks to the CSBQ Excellence Award, I travelled to the University of Idaho to work with Dr. Christine Parent’s lab and explore a new idea: using museum collections of Galápagos land snails to reconstruct hidden host-parasite interactions.
The story began with a fascinating discovery. Some land snails can kill parasitic nematodes using their shells. Yes, their shells. The same structure we usually think of as protection against predators or drying out can also become a defensive weapon against parasites. In evolutionary biology, this is called co-option: when a structure that evolved for one function is repurposed for another. Feathers, for example, likely had early roles in insulation or display before becoming central to flight in birds.
In these snails, nematodes become trapped and encapsulated inside the shell. This might sound like a weird natural history detail, but for us, it opened a door. If nematodes remain preserved inside shells, could we recover their DNA from museum specimens? And if we could, could we reconstruct which parasites interacted with which snail species across islands, habitats, and evolutionary history?
An encapsulated nematode within a snail shell, under the microscope. Photo by Alex Fuster.
For my research on Naesiotus, the largest radiation of land snails in the Galápagos, this possibility was thrilling. These snails are endemic, diverse, and distributed across a clear island context. Their evolution, traits, and habitats have been studied for years, but one major piece was missing: their ecological interactions. If we could recover parasite DNA from shells, we could build a host–parasite network and ask how interactions relate to diversification.
The project was risky from the start. We did not know whether Naesiotus shells would contain encapsulated nematodes. We did not know whether DNA could be extracted from those tiny traces either. Even obtaining snail DNA from old shells can be challenging, and here we were hoping to recover parasite DNA from microscopic structures preserved inside them. There were no ready-made protocols. No guarantee. Just an idea, a collection, and a lot of curiosity.
The CSBQ award helped me to follow that idea. In Idaho, I began working with Ian Oiler, a PhD student in Christine’s lab, and Jane Dosart, manager of the lab. We opened hundreds of tubes containing shells collected from volcanoes across the Galápagos Islands: unique, endemic, and often endangered specimens, each carrying a small piece of natural history.
At first, we were simply searching for signs of encapsulated nematodes. Then we found one. Then another. Then another. Soon, the excitement became contagious. We were astonished to see encapsulations across all the species we examined. Tiny structures inside shells became evidence of past encounters between hosts and parasites. It felt like opening biological time capsules, one shell at a time.
The month in Idaho was intense: long days, non-stop lab work, and constant problem-solving. It was also deeply stimulating. I exchanged ideas with researchers working on phylogenetics, evolution, and bioinformatics. As an ecologist, I often use phylogenies as tools, but being surrounded by people who develop these methods reminded me that phylogenetics is an entire discipline of its own.
Then came the moment of truth: DNA extraction and sequencing. Normally, one would carefully test primers, optimize protocols, and sequence a small pilot set first. But we had limited time, and this project was already a leap into the unknown. We made our best bet, using primers and pipelines from recent work on nematode DNA, sent the samples off, and waited.
Ian Oiler (left) and myself (right), immersed in thousands of snail shells, being the first to witness interactions from the past. Photo by Jane Dosart.
Those weeks felt long. Would there be enough DNA? Would the primers work? Would we recover anything meaningful?
When the results came back, they were better than we had dared to expect. It worked. And it worked remarkably well.
We recovered a large diversity of nematodes associated with Naesiotus species, including many taxa previously undocumented from the iconic biodiversity of the Galápagos. From shells sitting in collections, we reconstructed a hidden host–parasite network across the archipelago and began testing how ecological interactions and diversification are connected – if you are curious, this work is now available as a preprint.
Perhaps the most exciting part is that this approach does not have to stop with Naesiotus.
Many land snail radiations exist on oceanic islands around the world, and many are represented in museum collections. If encapsulated nematodes occur in other systems, shells could become archives of ecological interactions across space and time.
This project also taught me something I would like to share with other students: curiosity becomes much more powerful when it is shared.
The idea began because I came across the work of Robbie Rae, whose research on snail–nematode interactions fascinated me, and I wrote to him. That first exchange helped turn a strange observation into a possible project. But curiosity alone was not enough. The project became possible because supervisors, collaborators, students, and technicians were willing to be curious with me. None of us knew whether it would work.
For me, this experience was a reminder that curiosity is worth following, especially when it brings other people into the question. Write to those whose idea made you think differently. Ask the strange question. Talk to people before the idea feels fully polished. Some ideas will not work, of course. But sometimes, if you find people willing to be curious with you, a risky intuition can become a discovery.
The story is still unfolding. The Galápagos National Park has invited us to present this work at its 7th Science Symposium, and we are now discussing an exhibition at the Charles Darwin Foundation to showcase the hidden complexity of biodiversity: the world of parasites, the evolutionary creativity of snails, and the enormous value of scientific collections.
Museum specimens are often seen as records of the past. But sometimes, they also contain the discoveries of the future.
About the Author Alexandre Fuster recently finished his PhD with Dominique Gravel, studying ecological and evolutionary dynamics of interaction networks. He is currently starting a postdoc with Guillaume Blanchet (Université de Sherbrooke) and the Insectarium of Montreal to study how climate change may impact insect communities in the Arctic.
Par Alice Tanguay, étudiante à la maîtrise à l’Université du Québec à Rimouski
Lors de la première semaine de février 2026, j’ai eu la chance de participer à la 18e édition de l’International Symposium on Early and Lower Vertebrates (ISELV) grâce à la bourse d’excellence du CSBQ. Cette année, la conférence se déroulait pendant une semaine dans la petite ville de Berrechid, au Maroc.
À cette occasion, j’ai présenté une communication de 15 minutes portant sur les résultats de ma maîtrise. Mon projet de recherche s’intéresse à des espèces de poissons fossiles ayant vécu il y a environ 375 millions d’années, au Dévonien. Ces fossiles proviennent du parc national de Miguasha, au Québec, un site classé au patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO reconnu pour la richesse exceptionnelle de ses fossiles.
Je travaille plus particulièrement sur un groupe fascinant de poissons à nageoires charnues : les porolépiformes. Aujourd’hui disparus, leurs fossiles sont les seuls témoins de leur existence et les scientifiques commencent à peine à dévoiler leurs secrets. Les porolépiformes sont essentiels pour comprendre l’évolution des vertébrés. Cependant, la rareté des spécimens complique l’étude de leur diversité et des relations entre les différentes espèces. Le parc national de Miguasha a permis la découverte de deux espèces de porolépiformes, Quebecius quebecensis et Holoptychius jarviki. Plus récemment, une potentielle troisième espèce a été mise en évidence, bien qu’elle n’ait pas encore été nommée ni décrite en détail.
Spécimen adulte de Quebecius quebecensis
Des rencontres inoubliables
La première journée de la conférence consistait en une soirée de réseautage permettant de briser la glace et de rencontrer d’autres participants. Les présentations se sont ensuite déroulées sur quatre jours. Il s’agissait de longues journées, généralement de 9 h à 17 h. Les conférences avaient lieu dans un amphithéâtre.
Comme il n’y avait qu’une seule séance de présentation, j’ai eu l’occasion de présenter lors de la dernière journée devant une centaine de scientifiques. Ma présentation durait environ 12 minutes et était suivie d’une période de questions de 3 minutes. L’expérience était particulièrement impressionnante puisqu’il fallait présenter au microphone sous de puissants projecteurs. Toutefois, cela s’est très bien passé et j’ai reçu plusieurs commentaires positifs. Il est toujours intéressant d’obtenir l’avis d’autres scientifiques.
Par la suite, le comité organisateur de la conférence nous a tous amenés à Marrakech, où nous avons eu la chance de visiter la ville et plusieurs sites inscrits au patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO. Nous y sommes restés deux jours dans un complexe tout inclus, et c’est à cet endroit que la conférence s’est conclue.
Lors de la conférence, j’ai eu la chance de faire des rencontres extraordinaires. En tant qu’étudiante, j’ai pu rencontrer les auteurs des articles scientifiques que je lis et cite depuis le début de ma formation. Ces noms, que je voyais jusque-là uniquement sur des pages de publications, prenaient soudainement vie devant moi, autour d’un café ou lors d’une discussion après une présentation.
Cette expérience m’a permis de les découvrir sous un autre jour, beaucoup plus humains et accessibles que l’image sérieuse que l’on peut se faire en lisant leurs travaux. Derrière les figures importantes du domaine se trouvent des personnes passionnées, curieuses et profondément chaleureuses.
J’ai également tissé des liens précieux avec d’autres étudiants venant des quatre coins du monde, notamment d’Australie, du Japon et du Brésil. Dans cette petite communauté de paléontologie, j’ai ressenti un soutien immense et authentique. Il n’y avait ni compétition ni rivalité, seulement de la bienveillance et ce sentiment merveilleux d’être unis par une même passion.
On a très bien mangé !
Il fallait absolument que je vous parle de la nourriture marocaine ! Nous avons très bien mangé pendant tout notre séjour. Leur cuisine traditionnelle est incroyable : j’ai mangé le meilleur couscous de ma vie. Si vous allez un jour au Maroc, je vous conseille d’essayer les tajines et leurs pâtisseries, notamment la chebakia.
Pour les personnes véganes, cela peut être un peu plus compliqué, mais la cuisine marocaine inclut beaucoup de légumes, donc si vous êtes végétarien, c’est tout à fait faisable. Voilà, je vous mets une petite photo pour vous faire saliver !
Nous n’avons pas vraiment eu l’occasion de visiter Berrechid, puisqu’il ne s’agissait pas d’une ville particulièrement touristique, mais nous avons pu nous reprendre lors de notre séjour à Marrakech. Nous y avons découvert des endroits époustouflants. Les bâtiments étaient ornés de magnifiques mosaïques aux couleurs vives. Nous avons également visité les souks, de grands marchés où les artisans vendent notamment des produits de maroquinerie. Voici une photo de la mosquée Koutoubia, située à Marrakech.
Retour au Québec
Cette conférence m’a donné un regain de motivation pour poursuivre mes recherches et explorer de nouvelles questions scientifiques. Rencontrer des scientifiques venus des quatre coins du monde m’a également permis de développer des partenariats et d’envisager de futurs projets collaboratifs.
À notre niveau, il est facile pour les étudiants de s’isoler et d’oublier la raison pour laquelle nous avons choisi ce chemin. Mais lors d’une conférence, on réalise que notre petit grain de couscous, cette modeste contribution que représente notre recherche, prend tout son sens lorsqu’il se mêle à ceux de chercheurs venus du monde entier. Ensemble, ces grains forment un vaste champ de connaissances, et c’est en voyant cette mosaïque que l’on comprend vraiment l’importance de notre travail.
Cette semaine à ISELV 2026 restera gravée dans ma mémoire. Entre les présentations, les discussions passionnantes et les rencontres humaines, j’ai pu mesurer à quel point la science est une aventure collective. Je repars du Maroc avec de nouvelles idées, des amitiés précieuses et une motivation renouvelée pour mes recherches… et je sais déjà que j’y retournerai avec grand plaisir !
À propos de l’auteure:
Alice Tanguay est étudiante à la maîtrise en biologie à l’Université du Québec à Rimouski, au sein du laboratoire de paléontologie et de biologie évolutive du Dr Richard Cloutier. Elle se spécialise en paléontologie, plus précisément dans l’étude de poissons fossiles datant d’environ 375 millions d’années.
By Morgane Henry, PhD candidate at McGill University
In spring 2022, as I was just finishing my first-year as a PhD student, my supervisor came into the office with an offer I couldn’t refuse: “Would you like to go to a workshop in Marrakech?” Needless to say, I immediately agreed, and that is how I embarked on a series of workshops and side-projects parallel to my main thesis topic that would lead to some really cool research and collaboration.
The aim of that first workshop, “InvaCost II”, was to study the global economic impacts of biological invasions using a newly developed, first-of-its-kind database that compiled all known costs caused by invasive species (for example, costs due to crop yield loss or the financial burden to manage these species). That workshop in Marrakech was amazing. It was my first international workshop, and having the opportunity to spend a week in a beautiful place working with brilliant scientists from all over the world was exciting and humbling to say the least.
Participants of the InvaCost II workshop in Marrakech, Morocco
As always when you put 40-ish researchers together, the number of ideas and potential projects grew dramatically every day of the workshop. After a few days, I started focusing on a project aimed at estimating the unknown economic costs of invasive species in the European Union. Of the ~13,000 known invasive species in Europe, only 1% have reported costs, leading to a massive underestimation of the true costs of these alien species in the EU and highlighting the need to develop revised estimates.
Once the workshop was over and I was back in Montreal, we started working on the modelling approach for the Europe project. I will not lie, this was not an easy period for me. The workshop was very stimulating, allowing us to focus only on a single topic without outside distractions. But being back in my routine and having to juggle the regular tasks of grad school, my thesis, and a new, challenging side project was difficult. This period, the winter semester of 2023, was a bit of a blur: in the beginning, I thought I could manage everything, but as the weeks went by, I started to feel more and more pressure and began to feel overwhelmed. I kept telling myself, just one more week and I’ll take a little break, but of course, that week became weeks and I didn’t slow down. I finally hit a breaking point and had to take time away from work to recover. Now looking back and reflecting on this time, I realize how exhausted and burnt out I was; it served as a wake-up call, and I promised myself I wouldn’t get in that same situation again. Rest, it turns out, is also part of the process. After I came back to work, we managed to finish and publish the Europe project. My supervisor and I developed a model capable of extrapolating costs using macroeconomic scaling and temporal modelling approaches. The results of the study were staggering, and we found that costs due to invasive species in Europe could be up to US$28 billion, which is 501% higher than what is currently reported.
After finalizing this side project, I said I wouldn’t do any more side quests and would focus on my thesis, which I did… for about a year and a half. During this time, I prioritized my mental health and my thesis work. I became more confident as a researcher and worked on better listening to how I felt (and not just pushing through). Since I wasn’t really involved with the InvaCost group during this time, I thought it would probably be the end of my collaboration with them. However, to my surprise, I received an invitation in the summer of 2024 to attend the next workshop in the series “InvaPact”: the group would now be focusing on the ecological impacts of biological invasions. At this stage of my PhD, I felt more confident about balancing side-projects and my everyday work, so I accepted the invitation and spent two weeks in Paris a few months later.
A walk along the Seine at dusk
Attending the InvaPact II workshop was again an amazing experience: I got to see and work with people whom I had met at the workshop two years before, and I met new people in the invasion biology field. This time around, I felt more confident in my skills and in my ability to participate in the discussions. Similar to Marrakech, the number of projects quickly grew, and this time I was careful not to overcommit and only work on a few projects I was interested in and that I knew I could manage. After my time in Paris, I kept collaborating on the InvaPact project. The group met last November again in Barcelona, where several projects took shape — including one I am now leading on the ecological impacts of invasive species in Canada. Stay tuned for the results coming out soon!
A visit to the old city of Girona in Spain.
Looking back, these workshops and side-projects taught me things I couldn’t have learned from my thesis alone — how to collaborate across time zones and disciplines, how to pitch ideas to people you’ve just met, and how to keep momentum on a project when life gets in the way. The relationships I built through these experiences, and the skills I developed along the way, are ones I expect to carry well beyond my PhD.
For any grad student thinking about taking on side-projects: it can be an incredible experience, but ask yourself whether it aligns with where you want to go, and be honest about your bandwidth before you commit. The best opportunities will stretch your limits, but know where the line is before you cross it.
About the author
Morgane is a PhD candidate in the Leung Lab at McGill, where she studies the spatial and temporal dynamics of insect outbreaks. In particular, she focuses on the spruce budworm, a moth species native to Quebec that causes cyclical outbreaks, leading to millions of hectares of defoliation and widespread mortality among conifers. Website: https://morgane-henry.github.io/
By Veronica Groves, PhD candidate at McGill University
Between July 8th-11th 2025 I participated in the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) 2025 annual conference in Antwerp, Belgium thanks to support from the QCBS Excellence Award. For the first time in my career, I attended a conference not only as a presenter, but also as a session organizer. Alongside Dr. Britney Firth (University of Waterloo) and Dr. Sean Tomlinson (Government of Western Australia), I helped organize a session on “Shared challenges and diverse approaches to physiology in conservation across taxonomic boundaries”, in which I also presented a research talk on “The challenges related to using the minnow Blackchin Shiner (Miniellus heterodon) as a surrogate for the Threatened Pugnose Shiner (Miniellus anogenus)”.
First, why try to organize a session as a graduate student? For one, I found that organizing a session as a PhD student allowed me to increase my academic profile by putting myself on more people’s radars. When you organize a session, your name appears in the booklet, and you are on stage introducing speakers, both of which may mean that more eyes are on you. Secondly, it allowed me to get greater insight into what organizers look for in submitted abstracts, which can inform how I submit my work for future conferences. Thirdly -and this is conference specific – but there can be additional funding available to session organizers that can help offset the cost of attending the meeting.
But how do you go about organizing a session? This can really depend on the type of conference. SEB strongly encourages early career researchers (ECR) to participate in organizing sessions – and they advertise it as such. Other conferences may not explicitly say that ECRs are welcome to submit a session, but you do not know until you ask (as I say, “shooters shoot”). If you do end up deciding to organize a session, I found that it was very helpful to collaborate with more experienced colleagues. Dr. Firth was someone that I actually met at my very first conference in 2022 and we remained in contact (which speaks to the power of networking and building relationships!), and they reached out to me, as a more junior ECR to ask if I wanted to collaborate on the session as we both study the eco-physiology of species at risk in Canada. Then, we wrote an abstract detailing what we were looking for in a session and submitted it to SEB. For reference, our abstract was:
“Surrogate species, defined as a species that effectively represents another species that is usually the target of research, are suggested as a tool in applied conservation ecology to overcome limited data availability to inform decisions (Caro et al., 2005; Cooke et al., 2017; Castaneda et al., 2021). Surrogates can be a closely related species, or a member of the same target species but from a different geographical area (Castaneda et al., 2021). They can be selected based on similar traits such as habitat use, physiology, or phylogeny, and ideally they would respond to a stressor in the same way as the target species. However, there are major challenges to using surrogate species, namely identifying a suitable candidate and interpreting the results. Comparative physiology is a technique that we can use to bridge the gap between target and surrogate species by understanding how and why some species are winners vs losers when faced with anthropogenic stress.”
Once a session is accepted, what is next? Well, for SEB we were tasked with reaching out to prospective speakers, reviewing and accepting the abstract submissions and building a schedule for the session. These were tasks that had to be completed ahead of time. Then, on the day of the session, we had to briefly introduce each speaker, keep time so that they did not go over their allotted slot, and ask questions if there were no audience questions. An important tip here is to ask the speakers in advance how to pronounce their name (there is nothing worse than when you are introduced wrong) and I recommend writing out the phonetic spelling so that you can introduce everyone properly.
Hopefully this blog can empower other ECR to branch out and take on greater roles in their academic and scientific societies as session chairs!
About the author:
Veronica Groves is a PhD candidate in the Biology Department at McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Lauren Chapman. Having completed a H.BSc. Agri. Envr at McGill University and MSc. at Concordia University, Veronica specializes in the impacts of multiple stressors on freshwater fish behaviour, physiology, and life-history through the lens of conservation.
Par Gabrielle Bibeau Lapierre, étudiante à la maîtrise à l’Université de Sherbrooke
Écologiste de formation, j’ai d’abord eu du mal à accepter une maîtrise axée sur la modélisation, avec peu de perspectives de terrain. C’est dans ce contexte que j’ai saisi l’opportunité offerte par les prix Champions Blitz the Gap. Ma maîtrise porte sur la modélisation de la distribution des champignons du Québec à partir des données d’iNaturalist. Pour enrichir ces données, je me suis équipée de guides d’identification, d’un véhicule, et surtout d’amis biologistes, pour explorer la réserve faunique de La Vérendrye au Québec — un territoire généralement peu documenté, notamment en matière de champignons, comparativement au sud du Québec.
——
Jour 1 :
Préparation du matériel d’échantillonnage pour la journée sous l’abri-cuisine. Crédit photo : Aryan Morin-Comptois
Après une installation sous la pluie la veille, nous avons enfin pu commencer le terrain. Pas besoin d’aller bien loin pour observer une belle diversité : un simple tour du camping de la Baie des Sables, notre ‘domicile’ temporaire, nous a permis d’identifier près de 50 spécimens différents. Un recensement précieux, considérant qu’une seule observation fongique (un lichen) avait été enregistrée à cet endroit avant notre venue.
Jour 2 :
Arrêt en kayak sur une île du grand lac Victoria. Crédit photo : Aryan Morin-Comptois.
Pour bien s’éloigner des routes et atteindre les coins les plus reculés, nous avons loué des kayaks pour la deuxième journée d’échantillonnage. Malgré le courant capricieux et nos bras endoloris par les coups de pagaie, nous avons effectué trois arrêts riches en découvertes fongiques. Que demander de plus lors de notre seule journée ensoleillée de la campagne d’échantillonnage?
La troisième journée, nous avons circulé sur la route 29, nous arrêtant à plusieurs reprises pour échantillonner. C’est là que nous avons trouvé notre seul hydne de la semaine : Hydnellum caeruleum. Un hydne est un champignon dont les structures porteuses de spores prennent la forme d’aiguillons — de petits filaments.
Jour 4 :
Écologiste in the wild! Un bel étang de castor dans la ZEC Bras-Coupé-Désert. Crédit photo : Gabrielle Bibeau Lapierre
Pour notre dernière journée, nous avons fait un arrêt sur la route à la ZEC Bras-Coupé-Désert afin de prélever quelques échantillons en milieu humide. Quoi de mieux pour conclure le périple qu’une belle vue sur un étang et un thalle de lactaire à odeur d’érable (Lactarius helvus)?
——
En somme, ce fut un court voyage à la réserve faunique de La Vérendrye, mais rempli de champignons : une quarantaine d’échantillons physiques seront ajoutés au Fungarium de l’Université de Sherbrooke, et plus du double en observations iNaturalist.
À propos de l’auteure:
Gabrielle Bibeau Lapierre est étudiante à la maîtrise en Biologie à l’Université de Sherbrooke. Elle se spécialise en mycologie, en écologie et en modélisation. Curieuse et engagée, elle participe activement à des initiatives de vulgarisation scientifique, avec le désir de rendre la biologie accessible et captivante pour tous les publics.
