Category: Blog
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Ontario Provincial Parks Malaise Program Results!
Back in 2014 we deployed Malaise Traps in 51 Ontario Provincial Parks with the help of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) in a large experiment to assess arthropod diversity. We completed our analysis last year after sorting ~250,000 specimens and putting another ~750,000 through bulk analysis. That was a job indeed!
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Ontario BioBlitz at Riverwood Conservancy and the Credit River Watershed
It’s that time of the year again – Ontario BioBlitz time! This year we will be surveying the Credit River Watershed. A number of BIO staff along with researchers, students and citizen scientists are volunteering their time this weekend – June 11 and 12th, 2016 – to try to find as many species as they…
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DNA barcoding and Malaise traps capture the remarkable diversity in Canada’s National Parks
Hi everyone! As some of you may know, we here at BIO spend a great deal of our field work sampling in Canada’s beautiful National Parks. In fact, from 2012 to 2014, BIO and Parks Canada partnered up to complete a massive national barcoding project that aimed to map out the country’s arthropod biodiversity: the…
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The Moss Bosses
By Liz Darling (Sears) and Jesse Sills Hi everyone! Now that the vascular plants of Canada DNA barcoding project is all finished (Read about it here), the team here at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics has moved on to another group of plants: the Bryophytes. This term broadly encompasses all land plants that do not…
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Beetles, Bees, and… Beef?
Back in October, BIO sent out teams to three different museums to collect specimens. Both Connor and Angela have already outlined the details of their trips, so now it’s my turn! Valerie Levesque-Beaudin and I drove up to Montreal (Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue specifically) to visit the Lyman Entomological Museum and Research Laboratory on the Macdonald Campus of…
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Mr. Warne Goes to Washington
For two weeks in October, Jeremy DeWaard (BIO Collections Director), PhD student Jacopo D’Ercole and myself escaped the confines of BIO and Canada, and traveled to Washington D.C. We packed ourselves into a white Subaru around 6:45am and began the plodding 10 hour journey by car to the District of Columbia, a trip that only…
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Entomological Society of Ontario Conference 2015
This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Entomological Society of Ontario’s Annual General Meeting, this year held at the Queen’s University Biological Station (QUBS). Allison and I were invited to speak at the meeting and bring the BIObus along so everyone could learn how we promote insects, biodiversity and science to the…
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Aquatic and Worm Sampling in Bruce Peninsula National Park
After a successful week of sampling at Long Point Provincial Park, the BIObus was off to Bruce Peninsula National Park. The Bruce Peninsula divides Georgian Bay from the main basin of Lake Huron, and has some very unique aquatic ecosystems where interesting species can be found. We sampled a variety of these habitats which included…
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Wild water bugs and warm weather
As part of this summer’s ongoing BIObus adventures Adrian, Connor, Nate and I got the chance to go hunting for arthropods in the beautiful Bruce Peninsula last week. With the weather being more than welcoming, we eagerly strapped on our waders and set out to explore the diverse aquatic habitats of the Grey-Bruce region. One…
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Bogging in Bruce
Hello again everyone, This past week the team of travelling aquatic arthropod samplers visited Bruce Peninsula National Park, or BPNP. Connor, Adrian, Shannon, and I assembled from the roster of BIO Collection employees to make up last week’s BIObus team – you can see us posing for a great photo on the shoreline of Little…