Rôle sur l’équipe Beagle: Éditrice Role on the Beagle Team: Editor
Adithi Rao is currently a master’s student in McGill University, Montreal. She studies the behavior and neuroscience of freshwater fish, specifically how, when, and with which individuals they group. She also partakes in numerous student outreach and education activities in Quebec. When not thinking about fish, she is usually birdwatching, playing music, or running.
Adithi Rao est actuellement étudiante en master à l’Université McGill, à Montréal. Elle étudie le comportement et les neurosciences des poissons d’eau douce, en particulier comment, quand et avec quels individus ils se regroupent. Elle participe également à de nombreuses activités de sensibilisation et d’éducation au Québec. Lorsqu’elle ne pense pas aux poissons, elle est généralement en train d’observer les oiseaux, de jouer de la musique ou de courir.
Rôle sur l’équipe Beagle: Éditrice Role on the Beagle Team: Editor
Laura is a PhD student at McGill University co-advised by Drs. Rowan Barrett at McGill and Matthieu Leray at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. She splits her time between Montreal and Panama, where she studies the microbiomes of tropical coral reef fish and their responses to environmental change, leveraging the unique marine environments found on either side of the Isthmus of Panama. She’s happiest outside, be it swimming in the ocean alongside the fish she studies or backpacking in the Appalachian Mountains, although curling up with a good book, embarking on ambitious baking projects, and trying to capture fragments of the beauty of the natural world with watercolor are close seconds.
Laura est doctorante à l’Université McGill, sous la supervision des docteurs Rowan Barrett (McGill) et Matthieu Leray (l’Institut Smithsonian d’Investigations Tropicales). Elle partage son temps entre Montréal et le Panama, où elle étudie les microbiomes des poissons de récifs coralliens tropicaux et leurs réponses aux changements environnementaux, s’appuyant sur les environnements marins uniques qui se trouvent de part et d’autre de l’Isthme du Panama. Être dehors la rend heureuse, que ce soit à nager dans l’océan avec les poissons qu’elle étudie ou à faire de la randonnée dans les Appalaches – bien que disparaître dans un bon livre, entreprendre des projets de pâtisserie ambitieux, et essayer de capturer des fragments de la beauté du monde naturel lui apporte aussi beaucoup de joie.
By Anonymous, a PhD student from McGill University
My lifelong tenet is that learning follows experience. This tenet has kept me moving throughout my career as an ecologist. If the chance for a new experience presents itself, I will take it nine times out of ten. This tendency has given me experience in wildlife conservation, teaching, park management, backcountry leadership, and learning on the job. During “gaps” in my academic resume, I kept occupied by dozens of odd jobs. Though still young, my willingness to experience has taken me to Alabama, Maine, California, Washington, Honduras, Colorado, Barbados, Panama, Quebec, and many places in between.
This semester, I experienced the Neotropical Environment Option. This program, designed to give students a diverse knowledge of social and environmental topics in Panama and the neotropics, delivered. We traveled daily between deep lowland tropical rainforests, high cloud forests, Pacific and Atlantic. To experience the discomfort of heat, biting insects, stinging corals, salt, sun, and chaotic schedules was expected. All to be savored. All to bring us fully into the contrasting moments of equal and opposite wonderment. Wonderment for botany, coral ecology, fish behavior, entomology, paleontology, history, environmental justice, forest management, ethical social science, natural resource management approaches, inequality, natural history, climate change, and the connections between it all.
And what did these experiences teach me? Luckily, I journaled every day so as not to forget.
Field work is difficult no matter what taxa you are studying or in what terrain.
Rest days are always necessary. Take care of your body and mind first.
Bees are more intelligent, diverse, and fascinating than you think.
There are ALWAYS more questions to ask.
A career is not a prison. You can always change.
Marine field work requires intense specialized knowledge, physical stamina, and skill.
Walking around a town is the best way to get to know a place, even if you do not speak the language.
Sustainable agroforestry is possible.
There are so many knowledgeable, diverse, and kind people out there who are passionate to share their expertise.
Free diving is my new favorite activity.
This list is far from exhaustive. I am still coming up with new lessons from this experience. The most substantial lesson, the one that I needed to learn more than anything: There is hope to turn things around and preserve what is there. No matter how bleak the state of the natural world seems. Despite the feelings of futility that all conservationists feel.
NEO showed me that there is a huge community of passionate, intelligent, determined people who are dedicated to making positive environmental change. Although conservation is a daunting and sometimes lonely career, we as conservationists are not as isolated in our passions as we think. To be able to call conservation your career is a privilege. Let’s use this privilege to do the best that we can. And giving our best is enough.
About the author: The author has requested to publish anonymously.
By Anna Lippold, a PhD student at McGill University
Just a few weeks before Christmas 2023, I travelled to Northern Ireland to participate in the Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society (BES); funded by a QCBS Excellence award. The BES is a large society composed of ecologists not only from Great Britain and Europe but spanning the globe(heck, I even met someone who travelled from Japan!). For those of us who travelled from afar, we were often met with the sincere exclamation, “You really came all the way [from Canada] for this?”. A thousand plus researchers presented their research there, in sessions ranging from classic ecological fields like population dynamics and species dispersal to emerging fields like urban ecology and rewilding. Apart from the excellent talks from scientists, we had one plenary speaker, Isabella Tree, walking the audience through one of the first (or the first?) occasion to consciously turn farmland in the UK into wilderness by letting plants grow wildly and introducing larger herbivores like horses, deer and pigs that represented a pre-Anthropocene fauna. The room was packed, the talk inspired, and later sparked heated debates in small groups about whether it is ethically ok to allow non-native species in a rewilding project (Isabella says yes, “we are not precious about invasive species, if an ecosystem is strong enough, they won’t have much impact anyways”), and why no carnivores are introduced into these rewilding project, or, why, in Europe or the UK, it is so awkward to discuss animal population control (e.g., hunting).
At the conference, I had the opportunity to present my own research that explores the drivers of variation in spatial behavior within a population. To answer this question, I studyI a quite spectacular breeding colony of Ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis), where about 33 000 pairs breed yearly on a small island in the St-Lawrence just north of Montreal. Using GPS data from tagged birds, we’ve found a large spectrum of spatial behaviours, from some birds stay close to the colony, foraging at one (or very few) locations (often landfills or dumps), to others feeding up to 70 km away from the colony, travelling in intricate patterns over the vast agricultural fields outside Montreal. It is not quite clear where this variation comes from – is it that some birds have better spatial memory than others? Or a better sense of navigation? Do they have differences in the brain related to spatial abilities? Are anthropogenic contaminants and heavy metals affecting their brains to different degrees? Is it competition, allowing more bold and aggressive birds to defend closer, potentially better foraging sites, while the shyer ones have to avoid the bullies and go search elsewhere?
At the BES conference, I presented research that examined whether there are differences in navigational ability between birds, and whether that would drive differences in how the birds would naturally move through space. To test these questions, last spring I took a bunch of ring-billed gulls from their nests, equipped them with finely tuned GPS loggers, and drove them almost 100 km eastwards of their colony, where they were released and tasked to find their way back to the colony. This experiment was excellent fun (at least for me!), some birds flew back in an almost straight line, while others got very, very lost (although don’t feel bad, every single one of them made it back to their nests within a day). There was more variation in how my birds mastered this task than I expected. However, contrary to my hypothesis, their ability to navigate from an unknown location did not predict how they would move through the landscape naturally for foraging. This could suggest that foraging decisions are influenced by a number of factors, of which the ability to navigate unknown terrain is not the strongest. Following my presentation, I was quite frankly very (positively) surprised and almost overwhelmed by the interest and helpful suggestions I received. I left my session with a list of ideas of what else I could include in my analysis, and a list of people whose research I can study to better understand how and why birds navigate (I’m actually very new to this topic). Truly one of the most rewarding conferences I have participated in. And there was beer. Guinness of course – and a friendly waiter told me in no uncertain terms that it was not alright, actually rather an insult, to mix Guinness with cider, as I’ve seen (and enjoyed!) in some of Montreal’s Irish pubs. Alright, Sir! Sometimes you even learn something about the place you come from when you travel…
About the author: Anna Lippold is a PhD candidate at McGill University, studying potential drivers of variation in spatial behavior in ring-billed gulls, such as neuroanatomy, contaminant exposure and navigational ability. Before starting her PhD, Anna studied how foraging ecology changes trends of environmental contaminants in polar bears in Norway.
By Kelsey Wilson, a MSc student at McGill University
I did not follow the traditional path into environmental biology. Like many ecologists, I have always felt a strong connection to nature since childhood. However, after high school, my academic journey led to me studying fine arts. Driven by a deep curiosity about the natural world, I integrated research on animal behaviour and ecosystem interactions into my art practice. After earning a degree in textiles and sculpture, I managed my art studio for several years before returning to academia to study wildlife biology. Going back to school was an unexpected turn in my journey. However, I no longer wanted to escape into the worlds I created while it felt like the real world around me was burning.
Photosynthesis. 2020. Digital drawing by Kelsey Wilson.
I soon realized that conducting a scientific experiment was not so different from executing an art project. The laboratory, much like the studio, served as a space to brainstorm, pose questions, construct, and solve problems. Although labwork excited me, I instantly fell head over heels in love with fieldwork and knew that being in the field would be an essential component of my scientific career.
Currently, I am a Master’s student in Biology taking the Neotropical Environment Option at McGill University. I am working in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama on a project investigating the impact of the highly virulent amphibian skin disease, chytridiomycosis, on Neotropical frogs. The chytrid disease is caused by the waterborne fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and is devastating frog populations around the world, especially in species-rich Neotropical regions spanning Central and South America. Panama, in particular, is home to many species threatened with extinction by the fungus. My research examines how infection differs within and between frog species at different life stages in the Panamanian lowlands.
Swabbing frogs for infection on Pipeline Road. March 2023. Photo by Henk van der Meulen.
In 2023, I lived in Panama for eight months conducting my field and lab research. I fully immersed myself in the STRI community and formed deep friendships with like-minded colleagues. My new friends helped me decompartmentalize my perspective on art and science and realize the two can symbiotically coexist. After long days in the field or in the lab, we would meet at night to craft together, sharing stories and hypotheses while crocheting and drawing. These memories are as valuable to me as the skills and lessons I learned by attending seminars and workshops.
This year, I returned to STRI to participate in two field courses with the support of the QCBS Excellence Award. Revisiting Panama for a second time intensified my love for the country’s unique and abundant biodiversity and reaffirmed the sense of community I discovered last year. Our course visited multiple regions of Panama, conducting fieldwork in rainforest, cloud forest, marine, and freshwater biomes. Having been raised in a deciduous forest biome with foothills that we call mountains, experiencing the lushness of the Panamanian highlands was a major highlight for me. I was also pleasantly surprised by the marine module of the course. The biodiversity at Coiba National Park is incredible; we encountered hawksbill turtles, whitetip sharks, crown-of-thorns starfish, and—my personal favourite—many species of pufferfish.
This is what it could be like. 2023. Digital drawing by Kelsey Wilson.
Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) at Coiba National Park. Photo by Laura Lardinois.
In addition to gaining knowledge and experience across many fields, we also had the opportunity to connect with international researchers at various stages of their careers. This gave us a broader view of how science works globally and allowed us to exchange and discuss ideas, making our learning experience even more enriching. This exchange was also present in our cohort, which contained students from several Latin American countries as well as from the United States and Canada. The diverse representation within our group was another highlight of the course. It was incredible to meet people from different backgrounds, all united by a common passion to protect the environment and study our beautiful planet.
When I first changed careers, I was concerned that studying animals would be another form of escapism. However, I have since discovered that working in science, like in art, requires collaboration and community to excel. This realization has transformed my perspective and added more purpose to the path I continue to follow in the field of science. Cheers to more creative, curious, and collaborative research!
Mount Totumas highlands, Panama. January 2024. Photo by Kelsey Wilson.
Thank you to the individuals and institutions who have generously supported my research journey: supervisors, friends, family, volunteers, technicians, NSERC-CGSM, QCBS, FRQNT, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute & McGill University.
Photo by Henk van der Meulen.
About the author:
Kelsey Wilson is a Master’s student in the Department of Biology in the Neotropical Environment Option at McGill University. Her research objective is to investigate the impact of the amphibian skin disease, chytridiomycosis, on various Neotropical frog species across different life stages. Her research explores topics such as community ecology, disease dynamics, and wildlife conservation and is conducted under the supervision of Dr. Roberto Ibáñez at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Dr. Virginie Millien at McGill University.
By Emmanuelle Barreau, a PhD student at the Université du Québec en Outaouais
In May 2023, I participated at the Advanced Field School in Computational Ecology at the Couvent de Val-Morin, during which we studied prey-predator relationships in natural environments and the analytical methods for these complex datasets.
Throughout the week, we were key players in an experimental approach, the “TrophIE game”. Similar to cat-and-mouse game, each player metamorphoses and plays the role of either prey or predator. Our playground was located in the magnificent Laurentian-Eco parc.
Once equipped with sensors to record our behavior and trajectories, the TrophIE game begins! The rules are very simple. First, the “prey” players scatter throughout the forest, gradually exploring, finding hiding places and seeking out food resources or refuges, as indicated by previously installed stakes. Prey players can also choose between generalist and specialist diets. A few minutes after the prey have dispersed into the woods, “predator” players enter in the game. Prey and predators share a common behavior: eating to survive and eventually reproduce. To do this, it’s important to acquire knowledge of the environment, and in particular, the location of resources and refuges. The only difference lies in the type of food resource targeted. As a prey animal, you need to acquire resources while minimizing predation pressure. This requires extra vigilance, the ability to hide, a good knowledge of the playground and the location of food resources, as well as of refuges to protect oneself from predators. Predators also need to know the locations of resources and refuges, to increase their likelihood of finding prey . Alternatively, they can attempt stalking strategies or chases for the fastest and most intrepid through the playground’s fiery vegetation and rocky slopes. The game lasts around twenty minutes, enough time to give each player the experience of what it’s like in the wild – both, for the prey who must eat without being spotted, and for the predators who must find, run and catch their prey before they reach a refuge. We repeated several games over the week, with some changes in rules to add competition pressure. A truly immersive experience, where every creak in the forest kept us highly vigilant!
The field school’s activities were conducted as if they were part of a real research program. Once the games had been played, everyone could discuss their feelings and game strategy, as preys or predators. Then, the data from each sensor was downloaded. Each game yielded an insane amount of information on the different players’ strategies according to the role played, prey vs. predator, and this data was acquired for each time the game was played. The questions one can explore are manifold! How does the experience between games influence prey survival? What are the different behaviors of prey and predators that can be identified and classified over the course of the games? How does predation pressure influence prey distribution? Are some resource locations used more than others? What was the most efficient way to survive between generalist or specialist diet? To what extent does competition between prey for the same resource influence the spatial behavior of prey and predators? The dataset represents a real goldmine for scientific minds, and naturally, an atmosphere of interdisciplinary collaboration emerged between us during the week. Ideas were flying all over the place! Discussions were had all the time about potential projects to be born, hypotheses or theories we’d like to test with this precious data…
For my first participation in an international doctoral school, I was very grateful to be part of this enriching working atmosphere and incredible mutual support. I was very impressed by the gathering of mentors and students from all horizons and all motivated by the same research interests.
The week was also an excellent opportunity to discuss our careers as young researchers, our training and our experiences in the field, and our future projects. Next to the fire, we shared our doubts and difficulties about the world of research, and ways of overcoming them and maintaining personal fulfillment. On the last evening, we sang together with guitar chords, happy but kind of sad that the school wasn’t going to last longer. From start to finish, the school was full of action, collaboration and emotion. My participation has been beneficial to my professional and academic development. I gained in-depth knowledge in several key areas of ecology, interacted with other passionate students and researchers and was inspired to explore new approaches in my future studies. I wish others to be able to benefit from a great experience like I had during this school.
About the author: Emmanuelle is a PhD student at the University du Québec in Outaouais, studying spatial and social ecology of beluga with Prof. Angelique Dupuch’s and Dr. Veronique Lesage. Her research contributes to increase knowledge on spatial and social ecology of the beluga population. Her PhD project contributed to increase knowledge on behavioral ecology of beluga, as part of a research programs aiming to evaluate noise impact on the population in Saint-Lawrence Estuarine, led by Prof. Clément Chion.
