Crystal Ernst

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Social media, mobile technology and an outdoor classroom

Last year, my field biology course took part in an amazing project – we used mobile technology in a field setting, and combined that with social media tools.  This was done in collaboration with Teaching and Learning Services at McGill, McGill Libraries, and the tablets were generously provided by Toshiba.  I am immensely thankful for the support and an truly honoured to be able to explore these adventures in teaching and learning.  More specifically, Laura Winer, Adam Finkelstein and PhD student Crystal Ernst helped make this project a success.

One of the ‘products’ of this pilot project is this 5 minute video about using social media to engage students in inquiry-based learning:

We are continuing with these kinds of initiatives, and a Brown-Martlet Foundation grant has allowed my Department to purchase some of the tablets originally used last year. This is terrific, and as the video illustrates, the students end up benefiting.

This term, the course is again using social media, and you can find details in this post, and follow along with twitter using the hashtag #ENVB222.

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Seasonality of Arctic Beetles

I’m excited to report on paper written by Crystal Ernst, PhD student in my lab, and well known as the “Bug Geek“. This paper is a product of the Northern Biodiversity Program (yes, it sure is great that the papers from this project are starting to appear!), and will be one of Crystal’s PhD thesis chapters. The paper is titled Seasonal patterns in the structure of epigeic beetle (Coleoptera) assemblages in two subarctic habitats in Nunavut, Canada

A very nice Arctic beetle! (photo by C. Ernst, reproduced here with permission)

A very nice Arctic beetle! (photo by C. Ernst, reproduced here with permission)

Here’s a plain-language summary of the work:

Although we often think of Arctic systems as cold and lifeless, Canada’s tundra habitats are home to a high diversity of arthropods (insects, spiders and their relatives). Beetles are important insects on the tundra – filling ecological roles as predators (feeding on other insects), herbivores (feeding on plants), mycophages (feeding on fungi), and necrophages (feeding on dead or decaying animals). In this research, we wanted to find out what happens to ground-dwelling Arctic beetles as a function of seasonality. We were curious about whether different species occurred at different times during the short Arctic summer, and whether the functions of the beetles changes over the summer. This is an important area of study because beetles perform important ecological functions, and knowing how these functions change over time may have broader implications for northern ecosystems. This is especially relevant in the Arctic since these systems have a short ‘active season’, and climate change is disproportionally affecting northern latitudes. If climate change alters an already short summer, what might happen to the beetles?

This research was done as part of the Northern Biodiversity Program (NBP) – a broad, integrative project about the diversity of insects and spiders across northern Canada. The NBP involved collecting samples at 12 sites in the Arctic, but at one of these sites (Kugluktuk, in Nunavut) we had an opportunity to do a more detailed collection over the entire summer of 2010. This involved setting out traps for the entire active season, from June through to August. These traps were plastic containers sunk into the ground – beetles that wander along the tundra fall unawares into these traps, which contain preservatives, and are trapped until a researcher collects the samples. Traps were placed in wet and (relatively) dry habitats so that we could compare the two habitats. After the collections were returned to our laboratory, the beetles were identified to species, counted, and the biomass of the beetles was estimated – biomass lets us determine what happens to the ‘amount of beetles’ on the tundra in addition to figuring out ‘how many’ (abundance) and ‘what kind’ (species) were in the traps. The beetles were also classified into their key ecological roles. The data were then compared as a function of when traps were serviced to let us assess what happens to beetles as a function of seasonality.

We collected over 2500 beetles, representing 50 different species – remarkably, 17 of these species represented new Territorial records. This means that 17 of the species that were identified had never before been recorded in all of Nunavut! Although many ecological functions were represented by the beetles we collected, most were predators. We documented that wet habitats had different kinds of beetle species than the drier tundra habitats, even though the actual number of species between the habitats did not differ. We also uncovered a seasonal affect on the functions of beetles in the system – as the season progressed, the beetles tended to be represented more by predators compared to earlier in the season, which was dominated by beetles representing a diversity of functions. The mean daily temperature also related to the seasonal change that was observed in the beetles.

PhD student Crystal Ernst, happily working on the Arctic tundra.

PhD student Crystal Ernst, happily working on the Arctic tundra.

This work is one of the first to carefully quantify how beetles change during short Arctic summers. We found a diverse assemblage of beetles, filling a range of ecological roles. These ecological roles, however, do not stay the same all summer long, and the shifts in the beetles were related to mean daily temperature. Given that Arctic systems will be significantly affected by climate change, this is worrisome – if temperatures increase, or become more variable, this may affect ecosystem functions that are mediated by beetles. This is more evidence supporting the need to track climate change in the Arctic, and play close attention to the small animals of the tundra.

Reference:

Ernst, C., & Buddle, C. (2013). Seasonal patterns in the structure of epigeic beetle (Coleoptera) assemblages in two subarctic habitats in Nunavut, Canada The Canadian Entomologist, 145 (02), 171-183 DOI: 10.4039/tce.2012.111

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Reflections: how social media has changed my life

About a year ago I started to write blog posts regularly – this was partially because I was invited to give a talk on social media in Academia at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of Canada (held this past November).   It was around the same time that I started using Twitter more regularly.  Up until that point, I was a casual user of twitter, and did not understand it.

After one year, I can sum up my feeling about blogging, twitter and social media in one word:  exhilarating.

Writing regular blog posts has changed my professional life.  It has allowed me to hone my skills as a writer, and learn to write in a different way – a way that attempts to bring science to a broader audience - an audience beyond the walls of the University in which I work.  An audience that is articulate, intelligent, interested, engaging, and passionate.  Writing blog posts has forced me to articulate clearly about my research, and to think about what I do as a scientist, and why I work on small, obscure animals.  It helps me think about the sort of advice I might give to graduate students, whether it be reviewing papers or thinking about how to succeed as a Professor.

I have learned that there is an incredible community “out there” and this community has something to offer.  I can now keep track of key happenings in science by following Malcolm Campbell, Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, and others.  I can learn about Higher Education in Canada by paying attention to Melonie Fullick, and I can learn more about my own University thanks to McGill’s amazing twitter feed.  I can learn about Entomology around the globe, and take part in  inspired,  meaningful (and sometimes hilarious) conversations with new friends and colleagues including Morgan Jackson, Derek Hennen, Dr. Dez, Chris MacQuarrie, Bug Girl, the Bug Chicks, Crystal Ernst, Alex Wild, and many more….  These interactions are barrier-free.  It doesn’t matter if the conversations are among Professors and undergraduate students, or with high school students.  It’s about keeping the conversations relevant, of high quality, and respectful.

I now have new colleagues from different countries – colleagues that I now collaborate with, including Graham Scott in the UK – he and I share many similar ideas about the value of field work in University courses.  Or Leslie Brunetta – she and I are now discussing neat ways to take spider silk research into new areas. Social media has also changed how I teach, and using blogs and twitter in the classroom has allowed students to see value in their course work that goes beyond the classroom. My undergraduate students tell me that they feel their University education is more valuable when they can interact with other experts.

Writing blog posts allow me another way to share my passion for all things Arachnida, from spiders to Opiliones and Pseudoscorpions.  Yes, our eight-legged friends are awesome, whether they are on your ceiling, in your windowsills, or living on the tundra. Social media has allowed me to write about things that I write about anyway – I am constantly answering emails about spiders, whether it be identification help, or general queries about venomous spiders.  By writing a blog post about these topics, (including “spiders do not bite” – my most popular post!), I can now refer people to posts instead or writing emails.  Writing posts does take some time, but it is a productive use of time.

On a more personal level, social media has given me meaningful and important connections to people: really good people.  People that I respect, people that are now part of an evergroing circle of friends.  We need to surround ourselves with good people.  Life seems to throw a lot of challenges – whether it is managing with the work-life balance, coming to grips with local and global tragedies, constant worrying about the health of our planet, or struggling with mental or physical health. It’s a big, sometimes scary and often intimidating world out there – and it’s easy to feel insular, lonely, and scared.  Social media is one antidote.  Social media is not a cure, nor should it be used as escapism – instead, I am saying that it brings a ray of light, a smile and a shot of optimism.  I am grateful to have become a part of this community.

As my PhD student Crystal Ernst and Bug Girl discussed (partially reflected in this post): social media is a tool that allows for productive discussion about science, life and the confluence of these.  It’s a discussion that can take part in a REALLY long hallway – a hallway that is inclusive, honest, and filled with bright lights.

I will finish with a big “thank you” to all my followers and friends (of this blog, and on twitter).  Your interest, comments and enthusiasm are so important to me and highly valued.

I wish everyone terrific end to 2012 and I look forward to continued discussions into the new year!

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Help Build an Arctic Food Web

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to attend a workshop about monitoring terrestrial arthropod biodiversity in the Arctic. In advance of that workshop, I offered to prepare a draft of a food-web that was ‘Arthropod-centric’.  There are many ways to build a food-web, and my first draft was focused on who eats whom.  In other words, an arrow depicting interactions would indicate predation (loosely defined).  An alternative would be to focus on energy moving through the system (i.e., the arrow would move ‘up’ from trophic level to trophic level, to indicate a transfer of energy).

Putting this together is a challenging, yet rewarding process.   I consulted with many of my colleagues with expertise in Arctic systems (including the folks involved with our Northern Biodiversity Program), and I am struggling to find the right balance between generality and specificity.  Here’s a portion of the (draft) food-web, showing some of the interactions:

Part of an Arctic Food Web, with an Arthropod Focus

When working on this food web, some interesting generalities are emerging: First, the overall dominance of Diptera (flies).  This is certainly because they do everything (e.g., decomposers, pollinators, blood-feeders) and they are very diverse.   Second,  arthropods are integrators - meaning they connect different processes, and they bridge different systems (aquatic/terrestrial).  Third,  highly valued vertebrates  (and humans!) depend on arthropods (and/or are affected by them).

Does all of this pique your interest?  Want to help? Together with colleagues, I am seeking help as this food-web develops.  Send me an e-mail or drop a comment on this post and think about some of these questions and provide some feedback if you are so inclined:

….what interactions do you think are important in the Arctic, from an arthropod perspective?

….how can the interactions between vertebrates and invertebrates best be depicted?

….what interactions between humans and arthropods need to be included? (other than biting flies – that one is pretty obvious!)

….what ecological processes should be included in an Arctic food-web? 

There are other Arctic food-webs out there.   The Bear Island food-web is probably the best one that focuses on Arctic arthropods.  If you’ve not seen it, the paper by Ian Hodkinson and Stephen Coulson (2004) is worth a look.   That food-web is more specific than the one I am working on (it should be since it’s focused on a specific location and it can be because a lot of research has occurred there!).   I really like one of the last sentences in their paper: ...the Svalbard high Arctic terrestrial food web is far more complex than has previously been appreciated but further sections remain to be resolved.  Indeed!  I would argue that we need to develop these kind of specific food-webs from other locations in the Arctic, but to get there, we also need a general, broad overview that encapsulates the overall role and importance of Arthropods to the Arctic.  Hence the development of a general food web.

I’ll finish with some thoughts about using this blog as a platform for generating and refining ideas about this food web.  Last year I had a long discussion with my PhD student Crystal Ernst (aka the Bug Geek) about the use of social media in the creative thinking process.   Some parts of the discussion we had showed up in one of her posts about the role of social media in science.  There’s a nice quote in that post that really hits the nail on the head:

Social media is just another kind of “hallway talk…in a really, really, long hallway”. (Crystal attributes part of that quote to another fine blogger, Bug Girl)

Social media can be used effectively as a platform for soliciting feedback and generating ideas about science, including specific projects such as building a food-web diagram.   At this stage, I admit that I’m not ready to put the entire draft food-web in this post – it’s far too incomplete.  However, it is the perfect time to ask for help, and solicit ideas.

….I welcome your feedback.

Reference

D. Hodkinson, I., & J. Coulson, S. (2004). Are high Arctic terrestrial food chains really that simple? – The Bear Island food web revisited Oikos, 106 (2), 427-431 DOI: 10.1111/j.0030-1299.2004.13091.x

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

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.

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The Bug Geek meets Spider Man

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".

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The Arctic Circle

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!