2018

October 2018: I return to the Experimental Lakes Area for one last field sampling session. Grateful that the weather is not too cold, brr! In the following months, I will process all of my water samples for next-generation sequencing of fish diversity.

August 2018: My paper with Beth Clare is out in Molecular Ecology – you can read it here or email me for a full pdf. We use DNA metabarcoding to explore the contents of non-native carnivorous plants in the Alps along an altitudinal gradient.

Work with undergraduate author Isaac Eckert and U of Guelph collaborator Teri Crease is out in Advances in Ecological Research. You can see our paper here or email me for a pdf of our contribution “Bioinformatics for Biomonitoring: Species detection and diversity estimates across next-generation sequencing platforms”. Thanks to Michelle Jackson for helping us participate in this very interesting special issue on Next-Generation Biomonitoring.

July 2018: Work with Zenon Czenze is published in Ecology and Evolution – you can view it here (open access article). In this paper we applied metabarcoding to bat faeces to tease out seasonal differences in diet in New Zealand bats.

June 2018: I received a second QCBS excellence award to fund my field trips. Thanks QCBS! You can read my blog post about last year’s field research here.

I gave a talk at the IAGLR annual meeting in Toronto in the Ecoinformatics session.

May 2018: I submitted 425 libraries for sequencing 2017 summer fieldwork. And go straight back out into the field at the Experimental Lakes Area to sample during spring lake turnover.

April 2018: Melania and I are awarded a 14-day facility fee rebate for our fieldwork at the Experimental Lakes Area – thank you for this fantastic support.

Feb 2018: The month is off to a great start as work with Masters student Brandon Mong in John James Wilson’s group at the U of Malaya is published.

Work I did with PhD student VC Lim is published here in Urban Ecosystems (email me for full pdf). She explored the impacts of land use on the diet of the lesser dog-faced fruit bat in Malaysia. This was our first foray into using metabarcoding on seed material.

I gave an invited talk at an Ouranos symposium “Génétique et changements climatiques: Vers des pistes de recherche pour la conservation et l’adaptation de la biodiversité” in Quebec City to academics, industry and local government stakeholders. To see the programme and an archive of our presentations click here.

Jan 2018: An interview I did with the Experimental Lakes Area is out on their website. I also published a blog post with Le Beagle, the science communications website of the QCBS (Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science).