“We got off the train in the middle of nowhere and it was just the two of us in the house every day,” Joo said. “It’s a good thing we were friends beforehand.”

The two fourth-year bilingual biology students from Glendon helped Laura McKinnon, an assistant professor specializing in avian ecology and climate change, inaugurate her field research course. The pair were surprised to find that they were the only students who had registered for the two-week intensive program, but they made the most of the opportunity to learn about research design and field research first-hand. Their work focused on the diversity and abundance of shorebirds in two bays on Quebec’s GaspĂ© Peninsula. The students designed and executed their research strategy with input from McKinnon.

“We hypothesized that because the birds fed on invertebrates, the density of the shorebird population would be highest in those parts of the bay where the invertebrates were most available,” Carey said.

It may sound easy, but it required a lot of work to monitor the bird population, especially since they were both more familiar with human biology than avian biology. They did a literature review to determine if any similar research existed and delved into methods for measuring invertebrate density and shorebird diversity. They also quickly familiarized themselves with the common birds in the area, such as the greater yellowlegs and the semipalmated plover, thanks to bird books and many hours of observations with McKinnon.

“Our professor did her PhD on shorebirds, so we learned a lot from her,” said Carey. “She took us out every day the first week so that by the time we did our actual research, we knew the basic birds.”

In designing their project, Carey and Joo had to choose sampling sites that looked promising, using a GPS to ensure they were equidistant from each other and the shore. They checked tide charts to ensure that they could go out on the bay during low tide to collect core samples that allowed them to calculate invertebrate density at each site. Once the sites were determined, the students would monitor them from the shore using a telescope. After recording their data, they were able to determine whether or not their assumption was borne out by their observations. They discovered that, as they had hypothesized, the bay most abundant and diverse in invertebrates had a higher bird count.

“We designed and conducted the project from beginning to end,” Joo said.

It was an amazing experience, they said, and one with a twist: since both students attend Glendon, their interactions with the professor were all conducted in French.

Carey and Joo are both delighted to have taken the course and proud to have been its inaugural students.

“It was really individualized,” Joo said. “Professor McKinnon just allowed us to work on our research and trusted that we’d get the project done.”

Although she is more interested in human biology, Joo relished the experience.

“I really enjoy fieldwork and being hands-on with nature,” she said.

Carey, too, was delighted by what she called a “diverse, holistic experience.”

“I never took part in an exchange program,” she said, “and that’s what this felt like. I’m glad Professor McKinnon will be offering this every year to give other students a chance to learn first-hand about field research.”

By Elaine Smith, special contributing writer to Innovatus

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Glendon Biology Professor Radu Guiasu recently published a new book titled Non-native species and their role in the environment:  The need for a broader perspective. The book was published by the prestigious academic publishing house Brill, based in The Netherlands.

The book offers a more tolerant, open-minded, and positive view of so-called “invasive” plant and animal species and challenges the prevailing negative attitudes against such species. This detailed work, which is based on several years of research, attempts to restore some balance to the current debate over the role of non-native species, by offering a broader perspective, and taking a longer term, evolutionary look at these species and their impact in their new environments. The relatively arbitrary nature of terms such as “native” and “non-native”, and the rather inconsistent ways in which these terms are applied to biological species, as well as the subjective boundaries of so-called “native ranges” are analyzed.

The role of non-native species in their new environments can be considerably more complex than the anti-introduced species information would often suggest. There is frequently quite a contrast between what we actually know about non-native species and their impact and the categorical claims made against them. Thus, the more positive and nuanced perspective on introduced species and their impact offered in this book is much needed and long overdue.

Non-native species and their role in the environment, which was endorsed by prominent North American ecologists such as Mark Davis and Paul Moore, may contribute to a paradigm shift in ecology and conservation biology.  It may also perhaps lead to a general improvement in our attitudes towards non-native species and fewer unnecessary control programs against such species. Mark Davis, Professor of Biology at Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, wrote this about the book:  “Radu GuiaĹźu has written a thoughtful and critical review of our ideas about non-native species. An aquatic ecologist, GuiaĹźu questions the common notion that introduced species represent a major global ecological calamity. This is a must read for anyone interested in conservation and biodiversity.”

Guiasu is the the Coordinator of the Biology Program and the Environmental and Health Studies Program at Glendon. He is the 2009 recipient of the Glendon Principal’s Teaching Excellence Award, as well as the 2010 winner of the President’s University-Wide Teaching Excellence Award. He is also the author of a previous book, Entropy in ecology and ethology – co-authored with his father, York Professor Emeritus in Mathematics and Statistics, Silviu Guiasu – and about 30 specialized articles in fields such as ecology, conservation biology, animal behaviour, evolutionary biology, and systematics.

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A primate behavioural ecologist in Glendon’s bilingual biology program, Dr. Schoof specializes in the ecological, social, and physiological factors that influence—and are influenced by—social dominance in male primates. Her research program, now partially funded through a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, focuses on the behavioural and life history of wild vervet monkeys.

About the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Aiming to make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators for the benefit of all Canadians, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada promotes and supports discovery research, and fosters innovation by encouraging Canadian companies to participate and invest in postsecondary research projects. NSERC researchers are on the vanguard of science, building on Canada’s long tradition of scientific excellence.

“Funding from NSERC is a testament to the quality and importance of Dr. Schoof’s research. We are fortunate to have such an accomplished and enthusiastic professor in Glendon’s new bilingual biology program,”
— Christina Clark-Kazak, Associate Principal, Research and Graduate Studies.

About Schoof’s research program

Dr. Schoof became interested in social behaviour and reproductive strategies, including dominance, as a teenager:

“I noticed that my friends and I were sometimes—but not consistently—attracted to the same people. This is one of the reasons I chose to focus on mate preference in humans during my undergraduate degree in biology. Soon after, I realized that I preferred study subjects that couldn’t talk back: primates.”

For her graduate research, Dr. Schoof studied white-faced capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica and received  her Master’s and Ph.D at Tulane University in New Orleans. During her postdoc at McGill University, Dr Schoof studied red colobus monkeys in Uganda, as well as the vervet monkeys which are now her primary study species.

With the help of the NSERC grant, Dr. Schoof is planning to examine the socioendocrinology: that is, how the social environment affects the interplay between hormones and behaviour. In short, she’ll be examining how male vervets reproduce: how males develop, maintain, and display their dominance status, how dominance influences male reproductive success, and how females – and the females’ own reproductive strategies – influence males. For example, how does the availability of food in the environment influence the timing of female reproduction, and how does this in turn influence how and when males compete for access to these females?

Dominance and reproduction over a lifetime: short- and long-term research

In order to do this effectively, Dr. Schoof plans to conduct her research in two ways: firstly, she focuses on individual monkeys to examine  behavioural and physiological differences between individuals, and secondly, using a long-term approach, allowing her to study differences within individual monkeys at different stages of life.

Male primates demonstrate different reproductive and behavioural strategies based on internal factors—such as health, hormones—and external factors, like the number of fertile females, and the number and quality of other males, who are presumably also interested in mating with these females. It’s likely that a combination of internal and external factors will determine whether a male aims to become a high-ranking dominant male or instead remains a low-ranking subordinate.

In Dr. Schoof’s research, this information is captured best in a long-term study on individual monkeys: since many of these factors change over a monkey’s lifetime, their mating tactics will change along with them. That is to say, a dominant male may not always be the dominant male and, as such, may not always get first pick at potential mates, and he may not always be the females’ preferred mating partner. Other factors such as a male’s health, the number of male competitors, and the number of females are also factors that can change over a male’s lifetime and influence his reproduction. The best way to examine the relative influence of these factors is through longitudinal study, tracking the monkey’s behavioural ebb and flow over the course of their lifetimes.

About Biology at Glendon

Established in 2015, Glendon’s bilingual Biology program specializes in conservation biology, ecology, and animal behavior, featuring advanced research opportunities rarely offered at the undergraduate level. Learn more about the program »

Want to see more from Dr. Schoof?

We sat down to talk with her about her research on dominance and reproduction in white-faced capuchin monkeys.

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