The end of the semester is always hectic. Especially this year, since our lab had three year-long undergrad thesis students working away on various projects.
- Brittany Ferguson worked this semester on whether duck dispersal influenced macroinvertebrate metacommunity patterns. She found one of those very zen-like conclusions, where the absence of a predicted pattern is actually evidence for the importance of the process, and we will expose her zen-conclusions hopefully sometime this summer to the very critical research community. Brittany also combined her more artistic skills with her science background in the design of her thank you note to me. I wonder if we could somehow incorporate it into our manuscript submission?
- Kyle Gillespie successfully wrangled with an impressive, extensive data set throughout this year. After his thesis defense, he is actually making the scientific talk-show round and he is presenting his thesis results at a couple of local and international conferences. He will continue his path in science on the west coast, where he will start a MSc with his undergrad thesis co-advisor, Cliff Robinson at the University of Victoria. This is one to watch, for sure ;-)
- And last but not least, Luci Prelovec worked on the Churchill metacommunity system. She found evidence that zooplankton dispersal limitation at the start of the season has some very long-lasting effects later in the season (or priority effects). This opens up a whole new line of questions, and suggests that we should increase our sampling early in the season. Anybody interested in working on this question for a MSc or a PhD? Just contact me ;-)
