Ilia has published a new paper in Science of the Total Environment – Novel habitats for biodiversity? A systematic review and meta-analysis of freshwater biodiversity in stormwater management ponds
This paper examines how stormwater management ponds can support diverse communities and their potential role in acting as habitat for urban biodiversity. It’s an excellent synthesis of the literature.
If you follow the link you can download the paper for the next ~40 days. Get it while it’s hot! 🙂
Kelly recently had a paper based on her community science work accepted at Contributions to Entomology. This paper: “The Caddisfly Collective: Methods of assessing Trichoptera diversity on a continental scale with community scientists” presents the methodology Kelly developed to acquire samples from across North America with help from a diverse team of community scientists. Well done Kelly!
Rosemary Martin successfully defended her PhD on Wednesday! Whoot!! It was an impressive thesis and defense and represents the culmination of a huge body of work. Rosie’s results make it clear that winter is not a time of inactivity under the ice and that to understand these systems we need to understand what’s happening in across the winter.
Well done Rosie!! 
Kelly has a new pre-print up at BioRxiv based on her research into the systematics and biogeography of the Hydrotilidae trichopterans. Link below!
K.M. Murray-Stoker and S.J. McCauley. Assessing molecular phylogenetics of Hydrotilidae (Trichoptera) subfamily lineages, with notes on biogeography. Posted in BioRxiv, September 23, 2023.
I normally do congratulations for awards individually but they’re stacking up too fast! Three members of our lab have won fellowships recently and there are more awards as well so I thought I would do a summary here
Ilia Ferzoco was recently awarded a QEII-GSST, a highly competitive fellowship which supports her for the coming year. Well done Ilia!
Kelly Murray-Stoker was recently awarded an International OGS Fellowship. There are very few of these awarded across the university (22 awarded across the entire university from 100 nominees) making this a really competitive award. She also just received the Entomological Society of Canada’s Dr. Lloyd M. Dosdall scholarship, another highly sought after award that recognizes her research accomplishments. Nice work Kelly!
Zira MacFarlane was awarded a Zimmerman and Weis Graduate Scholarship in field biology from the Koffler Scientific Reserve. This fellowship recognizes their contributions to both research and the collegial environment at KSR. Great job Zira!
Bianca Marcellino, a recent MSc grad from the Murray and McCauley labs, has had her first paper accepted! This paper explores a question critical to understanding how climate change will affect animal behaviour. This work involved extensive mark-resighting of male dragonflies, Calico Pennants (Celithemis elisa), and detailed field observations of their behaviour. She found that at warmer temperatures males shifted their activity away from mating and more males were engaged in thermoregulatory behaviours in these conditions. These results suggest that as our climate continues to warm animals may have reduced time windows to engage in mating behaviour. This has important implications for the population ecology and evolution of species affected.
Well done Bianca!!
Kelly Murray-Stoker has been awarded an OGS scholarship for international students. This is a highly competitive award and an impressive accomplishment. Well done Kelly!
This prestigious award from the Faculty of Arts and Science at U of T recognizes a student in the Faculty of Arts & Science who has distinguished themself both academically and for their leadership and contribution to the life of the University through student governance, community service or volunteer work.
Congratulations Ilia!
Zira has been awarded a Sigma Grant-in-Aid-of-Research! This grant will help fund their research on the effects of urbanization on amphibians. Great work Zira!
Ilia was the recipient of the Ramsey Wright Award from Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. This is wonderful recognition of Ilia’s outstanding research record!
Well done Ilia!