The Cottenie lab will be active in Churchill, Manitoba again this year. I arrived in Churchill about a week ago and Brittany will be joining me in a few short weeks. Check out our progress as Planktoneers!
I also had the opportunity to attend a conference this week, the 5th annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, held at the Universite Laval. It was a well organized conference with a lot of energy and some very interesting talks and posters. Quebec City served as a wonderful setting for the conference and I was impressed by how the conference was truly bilingual. I was also impressed by vieux Quebec and the beauty of the St.
Tom Nudds and I co-taught community ecology for the first time together last semester (and Amanda was one of our wonderful TAs). Despite our differences ;-), we share a very similar teaching philosophy. And as a result of some crazy ideas, we decided to completely remodel community ecology. Tom’s rallying cry:
Out with rote learningTo implement this, we cut out all “normal” aspects of grading in our course, and instead we implemented 3 research projects in a problem-based learning framework.
Today Brittany and I took a walk over to the Arboretum to sample some of the temporary and man-made ponds, as part of an ongoing metacommunity study. With the warm spring we’ve been having, the zooplankton are in full swing, rivalling the communities we found in Churchill last year in August!Here Brittany is marvelling at the zooplankton and many aquatic insects:
Notice the tea-coloured water, it is stained by tannins leaching from the fallen leaves and detritus.
After a whole month of preparations, it finally happened: the procession of species. It started a little bit late for us, since I had a race in the morning. But thanks to cell phones, we could join the parade half way through. Kobe was really excited and waiting for the first sign of the parade and the rest of the lab.
Here are some random pictures of the different species and musicians bringing life music.
The Churchill Northern Studies Centre has hosted researchers from the Cottenie lab for the past couple years. This year we were invited to contribute a short write-up on our summer 2009 field season. You can read the article here:
http://www.churchillscience.ca/documents/Newsletter_Winter_2010.pdf
Also, be sure to check out the CNSC’s website for a preview of their new facility! The staff and volunteers at the CNSC are very supportive and a terrific resource for anyone doing science in the north.