articles

When Rick Ostfeld gets bitten by a tick, he knows right away. After decades studying tick-borne diseases as an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, Ostfeld has been bitten more than 100 times, and his body now reacts to tick saliva with an intense burning sensation. He’s an exception. Most people don’t even notice that they’ve been bitten until after the pest has had time to suck up a blood meal and transfer any infections it has circulating in its spit.

Last year, to commemorate Canada’s 150th birthday – and to lay a foundation for Canadian research excellence for the next 150 years – a group of scientists in our country embarked upon the Canada 150 Sequencing Initiative (CanSeq150).

Electronic radio tags could be used to track invasive Asian hornets and stop them colonising the UK and killing honeybees, new research shows.

One of Canada’s largest pension fund’s continued and increasing investment in fossil fuels does not support the widely held goal of limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, says a new report by University of Victoria and University of British Columbia researchers affiliated with the Corporate Mapping Project, a six-year research and public engagement initiative.

Researchers using satellite imaging have found much greater than expected deforestation since 2000 in the highlands of Southeast Asia, a critically important world ecosystem. The findings are important because they raise questions about key assumptions made in projections of global climate change as well as concerns about environmental conditions in Southeast Asia in the future.