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Biology

This category contains 282 posts

Humans can be good or bad for diversity

As a biology student at university, I was definitely left with the impression that humans were bad for diversity in the non-human world. This is a very colonial belief, one that had a huge impact on how nature was treated when European colonizers came to places like North America. I’ve discussed this before in a … Continue reading

Citizen Science and Machine Learning Could Help us Track Climate Change

Climate change is known to be impacting plant species. For example, in many regions spring-like weather is arriving earlier in the year. This impacts the plants and animals in these areas. However, collecting and analyzing the amount of data required to better understand what these impacts are for multiple species and in many different locations … Continue reading

Birds eating bugs on cars

As spring and warmer weather slowly creeps towards us, I got to thinking about bugs. Specifically, I was thinking about how few bugs get caught on car windshields these days. But when I started looking for research on this I got distracted by birds using bugs on cars as a food source. Jokimäki and Kaisanlahti-Jokimäki … Continue reading

Read anything by Robin Wall Kimmerer

That’s my post for this week as we follow International Women’s Day, in Women’s History Month, and look forward to National Indigenous History Month coming in June in Canada. The wisdom shared by Kimmerer in her writing is inspiring and motivating. Here is a link to an editorial written by Kimmerer and Artelle (2024) about … Continue reading

Extreme weather increases emergency room visits

Extreme weather events are increasing with climate change. This has many repercussions, and a new study by Salas and colleagues (2024) shows that emergency room visits and mortality increase in the aftermath. The researchers studied 42 billion dollar extreme weather events in the US between 2011 and 2016. They compared data between hospitals in affected … Continue reading

Black women in ecology, evolution, and marine science

I was exploring different organizations and resources supporting Black individuals in science and found BWEEMS or Black women in ecology, evolution, and marine science. So for this week of Black History Month, I’m recommending that you check out the profiles of some of their members.

When the temperature goes up, head for some greenery

Have you ever noticed the differences in temperature between a space filled with pavement and buildings and one with greenery? If so, then you likely won’t be surprised by the findings of Song and colleagues (2023). Song and her colleagues investigated how the presence of greenery in urban spaces impacted the number of heat related … Continue reading

Ghosts of past droughts

With this post coming out on Halloween, I thought I’d search the word ghosts in Google Scholar and see what came up. To my surprise, one of the first articles related to sustainability, so, of course, I had to read it. Kannenberg, Schwalm, and Anderegg (2020) published an article titled “Ghosts of the past: How … Continue reading

When the heat is too much the birds head out of town

If you have ever stood in the centre of a paved urban paradise where the buildings, roads, and parking lots add to potentially already stifling heat then you know how uncomfortable the urban heat island effect can be. Temperatures in the city, particularly densely built areas with little vegetation can increase the temperature by several … Continue reading

We need to think about the science and the social when it comes to climate change

I’m a big advocate for interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration. I’ve set up my classes to support this because the reality is that we need people to be thinking about sustainability across many different fields from supply chain to theatre. In addition, it is both natural and social systems that will be impacted by climate change, … Continue reading

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