We’re excited to introduce a new publication series: ABMI Science in Progress. Under this banner, we’ll release updates on work that’s currently taking place in the ABMI’s Science Centre—work that’s raw and will continue to evolve, but which we think our readers will find interesting in the meantime. This is the first installment, with the [...]
Guest blogger and ABMI collaborator Dr. Jessamyn Manson of the University of Alberta updates us on recent research into the relationship between wild bees and canola. At the peak of summer, your garden is probably buzzing with life! Alberta is home to nearly 300 documented species of wild bees, from large, charismatic bumble bees to [...]
As we know, Alberta is experiencing a long-term change in climate. The last 100 years has already seen an increase of about 1.4oC in average annual temperature, and it’s predicted that, over the next 40 years, the average temperature will increase at an even faster rate.[1] The ABMI has been working to understand climate change [...]
Wetlands provide numerous benefits to society, including clean and abundant water, flood mitigation, and habitat for wildlife. These benefits have become increasingly apparent, as wetlands are lost across Alberta resulting in greater risk to our infrastructure and biodiversity. Starting with agricultural settlement in southern Alberta, it’s estimated that approximately 64% of wetlands have been permanently [...]
“It absolutely makes my day when I can look at a row of numbers and identify patterns that are ecologically meaningful.” – MC Roy, Wetland Ecologist, ABMI From an early age, it seems Marie-Claude Roy was destined to be a wetland ecologist. Now, as the resident wetland ecologist at the ABMI, Marie-Claude, or MC as [...]
Gathering reliable measurements of animal populations is a long-standing challenge for wildlife biologists around the world. Estimating population size and density requires researchers to count individual specimens; this is an especially difficult task when working with species that move (sometimes over large geographic ranges) or live in difficult-to-traverse landscapes, like Alberta’s Rocky Mountains or its [...]
It was a day like any other when Varina Crisfield, the ABMI’s Vascular Plant Taxonomist, showed up for work at the ABMI’s Processing Centre at the Royal Alberta Museum*. Little did she know, she was about to achieve something few Alberta botanists can expect to do these days: identify a new species record for the [...]
“Spending your life staring through a microscope, obsessing over tiny features on tiny things that no one cares about but you.” If you think this is the life of a taxonomist, you’re not entirely wrong – but you’re overlooking a key truth. Without taxonomists we wouldn’t have labels for species or a common language to [...]