Sarah Loboda

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Meet the lab: Sarah Loboda

This is the second in a series of posts that will introduce the members of the arthropod ecology lab. This one is about Sarah Loboda:

I am not one of those people who can reflect back on my childhood with memories of chasing butterflies with a net. Instead, I could be found shouting loudly when seeing a spider in the bathtub. Things change… today I study community ecology of Arctic arthropods, and have a deep passion for arthropod of all kinds, from spiders to butterflies and flies.

Sarah, with a butterfly net.

Sarah, with a butterfly net.

My interest in entomology began as a challenge, and I love challenges! When I was an undergrad at Université du Québec à Rimouski, Québec, a tackled the big challenge of learning to identify insects. During my undergrad, I participated in several research projects where I could encounter biodiversity of insects and spiders and I developed a curiosity and a fascination about arthropods, particularly those living in extreme Arctic environments. Arthropods are ectotherms, yet they survive, year-round, in a region where the climate is very harsh. I quickly realized that the taxonomy was not the only interesting aspect in entomology. I wanted to identify arthropods in order to do research on community ecology. During the final year of undergrad in Rimouski, I decided to do a research project on the community ecology of spiders in salt marshes. As part of this project, I met Chris Buddle who encouraged my passion for entomology and the Arctic and I was lucky to do a Master’s project on spiders in the Canadian North as part of the Northern Biodiversity Program.

I take all opportunities to do outreach, and talk about insects and spiders with anyone who is interested. I am also involved in different societies, including the Entomological Society of Canada, and the Entomological Society of Québec, for which I’m the student representative. I love to volunteer and organize activities for members. Being the mother of two children, I also like to share my passion about arthropods with my kids, their friends and classmates in schools or daycares.

Sarah in front of her awesome poster at an Entomological Society of Canada meeting. This poster was a runner-up for a prize!

Sarah in front of her awesome poster at an Entomological Society of Canada meeting. This poster was a runner-up for a prize!

I have just started the second year of my Ph.D. I work with the veritable goldmine of data that has been collected from Zackenberg (northeast Greenland), where a long term monitoring program of arctic biodiversity has existed since 1996. My primary research objective is to assess temporal changes of the Arctic fly communities in this region, using the Muscidae and Phoridae families as model study taxa. The second objective of my research project will be to assess phenotypic and genetic changes over the last two decades in two species of Arctic muscids from Zackenberg. For this project, I am co-supervised by Jade Savage, a muscids expert from Bishop’s University, and Toke Høye from Aarhus University.

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It’s a wrap! How about a thesis on Arctic spiders? How about two of them…?

This week I am thrilled to report that two of my MSc students have successfully completed their degrees! Both the projects are part of the collaborative Northern Biodiversity Program – a project aimed to quantify and understand ecological change with Arthropods from Canada’s north.

A BIG congratulations to Sarah Loboda and Katie Sim  – they are both tremendously talented students, excellent Arachnologists, and wonderful people to know.  Last night we had our annual Lab BBQ – and at that event, I was pleased to give Sarah and Katie a small token of appreciation.  Here’s a photo showing them both with their wolf spider photographs (photos by the incredible Thomas Shahan):

Katie Sim (l) and Sarah Loboda (r) - successful MSc students!

Katie Sim (left) and Sarah Loboda (right) – successful (& happy) MSc students!

Sarah Loboda’s thesis is titled Multi-scale patterns of ground-dwelling spider (Araneae) diversity in northern Canada. Her research focused on broad diversity patterns of ground-dwelling spiders collected from our 12 study sites, spread across Canada’s north. Our project spanned 30 degrees of latitude and 80 degrees of longitude –> yes that is a lot of land area! Sarah identified over 300 spider species from 14 families, and over 23,000 individuals.  Publications are forthcoming so I won’t give details here, except to say that we can learn a lot about diversity patterns over broad spatial scales using a study taxon such as spiders.

Here's where the Northern Biodiversity Program took our field teams!

Here’s where the Northern Biodiversity Program took our field teams.

Katie’s work (co-supervised by Prof. Terry Wheeler) had a different slant, but was still on Arctic spiders. Her thesis is titled:  Genetic analysis of Pardosa wolf spiders (Araneae: Lycosidae) across the northern Nearctic. The first part of Katie’s thesis was about understanding the phylogeographic history of the Arctic spider Pardosa glacialis, with particular attention to post-glacial dispersal patterns, as inferred by population genetics. The second part of her thesis was focused on whether or not there is enough evidence to suggest two northern Pardosa species should remain as separate species, or be merged into one – based on both molecular and morphological characters.  Let’s just say that Katie had to be a ‘field genius‘, ‘lab genius‘ and ‘spider genitalia genius‘.  Here’s an example of what she looked at, a lot:

The epigynum of a wolf spider species, (part of) the topic of Katie's research.

The epigynum of a wolf spider species, (part of) the topic of Katie’s research.

In sum, I am thrilled to see Sarah and Katie finish up their work, although their success also comes with a touch of sadness, as I will miss their daily presence in the laboratory.  Stay tuned… we shall soon report all the details from their research.