Crystal Ernst

Professors take the summer off (another myth of Academia….)

/ Chris Buddle / 1 Comment

The academic term is over, and so are my teaching duties (until September). This is the time of year that I sometimes get asked how I am going to spend my summer off from work. Many people think that Professors teach University classes and then sit back and relax for four months every summer - Oh, we may wander in to work now and then, do some ‘critical thinking’, muse poetically about society and our place in it, but by in large, the summer is for leisure time, long lunches, vacation, and recovery after that tough eight months of teaching.

WRONG!

For a Professor at a University with a research focus in addition to teaching duties, the summer is for making significant progress on research. For a field biologist, such as myself, summer is often the busiest time of year. Studying animals outside (in Northern countries) means that we must cram a lot of work into four short months! Quite often we also work on grant applications (many of these are due in the early Autumn), and without grants, our research programs will fail. Yes, the summer offers some flexibility, but it certainly isn’t all leisure - a lot of work must get done and the expectations are high.

Dorothy showing off some excellent “single rope technique” for accessing maple tree canopies

In my laboratory this summer, Dorothy Maguire (who did pass her comprehensive examination successfully - congratulations, Dorothy) will be doing her second summer of field work on her PhD project about the effects of forest fragmentation on hebivory (by insects) in the Montérégie. This project is done in collaboration with Dr. Elena Bennett’s research team (and Elena is Dorothy’s co-supervisor). This work is very exciting and novel, in part because Dorothy is putting this work in the context of “ecosystem services” -i.e., the various services that humans get from ecosystems. Insects feed on trees, and trees are valuable to humans, so the linkages between insect herbivores and ecosystem services are important to study, especially in the context of fragmented forests of SW Quebec.

We also have a field team heading up to the Yukon Territory to finish some field collections in the context of the Northern Biodiversity Program. Katie, Crystal, and Laura will be collecting spiders, beetles, parasitoids (& more) along the Dempster Highway (one of the most beautiful places on the planet).

The Dempster Highway, Yukon.

To help us prepare for the summer, we must first clean up our messy lab. As is tradition in the Arthropod Ecology Laboratory, spring cleaning happened this past week. We put on a brave face, tackle all the dark corners of the laboratory, throw out unlabelled material, clean the desks and discover quite a number of surprises. A couple of lovely finds this year included an unlabeled 10 lb bag of soil at the bottom of a fridge (yikes!), and a colony of Collembola (springtails) from 2003!! (there was no evidence of life within that jar, yikes again!):

Crystal and Raphael laughing about the ‘unknown’ bag of soil.

Springtime is therefore an exciting time in the lab, and as an Academic at McGill, it’s an important period of transition from a teaching focus to a research focus. I certainly do take my official vacation time in the summer, but in addition to that time, the summer months are busy and (hopefully) productive. Remarkably, I can also find time to use a microscope again - this is a rare event, as this post describes. Want proof? Here you go:

Chris Buddle actually doing laboratory work. Wonders never cease.

The Bug Geek meets Spider Man

/ Chris Buddle / 4 Comments

Prof. David Wise, from University of Illinois at Chicago, visited our laboratory yesterday. David Wise is a very well known community ecologist, and is also an influential spider ecologist. On a personal level, David Wise influenced my academic career significantly, and I have long been inspired by his work. His book “Spiders in Ecological Webs” remains an important piece of work (he was also the external examiner for my PhD).

David Wise gave a nice seminar in our Department, and I will write a post next week to share some of the knowledge we gained from that and from other interactions with him. Today, however, I have different (fun!) story for you.

Many of you are aware of “The Bug Geek” (aka Crystal Ernst, my PhD student). In addition to being an excellent scientist, Crystal is a terrific photographer. A few weeks ago, she opened up an on-line shop to sell her wares, including a mug with this lovely picture of Eris militaris on it (by the way, Crystal is doing this in part to help fund her trip to “BugShot2012”.

Eris militaris, a jumping spider. Photograph (C) C. Ernst.

This jumping spider is the study species of my PhD student Raphael Royaute. I bought one of Crystal’s mugs, and it arrived on Wednesday.

The Bug Geek, with the mug

Confused, yet? Here’s the recap: Spiders are great, Crystal photographed Raphael’s study species and put the image on a mug, I bought the mug, it arrived (quite unplanned) the day before David Wise showed up in the laboratory.

So, as you can anticipate, David Wise walked away with “The Mug in Question“. This was entirely appropriate, and I was thrilled to give it to him. A small token of thanks to one of my academic mentors. He was pleased, as were the rest of us. Now I’ll have to go and buy something else from Crystal’s store! (you should too)

Raphael, Crystal and David Wise, with "The Mug in Question".

The Arctic Circle

/ Chris Buddle

On Tues, 10 January, PhD student Crystal Ernst delivered a talk entitled, “Arctic Arthropod Ecology and the Northern Biodiversity Program”, at the annual general meeting of the Arctic Circle, a group of Arctic researchers and aficionados that meets monthly in Ottawa, Ontario.

The talk provided some background information on the importance of arthropods to biodiversity and in ecological research, and some examples of recent changes in the biodiversity of arthropods in northern Canada were explored. There was a discussion of the history of arthropod collection efforts in the Arctic, including the Northern Insect Survey of the mid-1900s. The presentation finished with an overview of the research being undertaken by the Northern Biodiversity Program and some interesting data coming out of an 8-week study of the beetle fauna in Kugluktuk, Nunavut (part of Crystal’s PhD research).

The 45-minute presentation was very well received by an enthusiastic audience of 50+; many thoughtful questions were asked at the end (and again after the meeting had been formally concluded!). Crystal was grateful for the opportunity to work on her lecturing skills with such a receptive group and has been invited to return with an update at a future meeting!