Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Parasites are aggregated, but how are contaminants distributed …

Parasites are aggregated, but how are contaminants distributed among the hosts? And why does it matter? A recent paper by André Morrill, Jenn Provencher and myself recently asked and partially answered these questions. We reviewed the literature over 23 years to show that interest in the combined effects of contaminants and parasites on host... More

Friday, October 3, 2014

For peanuts

Recently, there has been some intriguing research on the potential links between peanut allergies and antibiotic use early in life. Two labs in the United States appear foremost in this research area. One is at the University of Chicago and the other is at New York University. The work by Dr. Nagler and her team... More

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Red eft days of fall

I was walking on the weekend when I came across this little amphibian. Many of you will have recognized this as a red eft the terrestrial stage of a salamander species common to this neck of the woods (or at least to ponds therein). A couple of things are worth noting. The picture was... More

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Royal Society of Canada creates new college

As Associate Vice President (Research&International) here at Carleton University, I keep my eye on awards given to our emerging young scholars. Recently, the Royal Society of Canada created the college of new scholars, artists and scientists. Two Carleton faculty, Sheryl Hamilton (Canada Research Chair in Law & Communications) and Stuart... More

Friday, April 4, 2014

Wiki thoughts on the plague

Note the following blog was written before I knew about the research highlighted in another blog: see Did rats spread the black death? Much of what I wrote about SIr Isaac Newton remains other bits and pieces were pure speculation. I am going to be thinking more about human fleas and lice. Anyway, with that caveat, you... More

Monday, March 3, 2014

Host species use by parasites

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that many, if not most, parasite species exploit several to many hosts species, for a given stage of their (i.e., the parasite’s) life cycle. The question of why such parasite species are catholic in their diet (I say diet because, really, the host... More

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Aggregation and covariation of parasites

Recently, one of my former students, André Morrill, got a paper accepted in the Canadian Journal of Zoology as first author on explaining covariation between ectoparasitic mites and endoparasitic eugregarine protozoans of Lestes damselflies. Many previous researchers have addressed the extent to which either mites or gregarines are associated... More

Friday, February 28, 2014

PhD student Sam Iverson talks about polar bears eating bird eggs

Recently, Sam Iverson got a lot of press on one of his PhD papers coming from the lab. In brief, polar bears are visiting seabird colonies and eating eggs more and more as sea ice is disappearing. The strength of Sam's analysis lies in his expanding the geographical  extent of what previously was thought... More

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Is harvest an effective strategy for curtailing Canada goose population growth?

  Wildlife agencies in Canada and the U.S face a predicament. Migratory Canada geese, which fly to arctic regions every summer to breed, require conservation protection. However, resident Canada geese, which breed in southern Canada and the U.S., often within city limits, are experiencing seemingly out of control population growth. These... More

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Quantifying human-related mortality of birds in Canada.

I would venture to guess many of us have witnessed a cat with a dying songbird. Nature’s red domestic. But have we stopped long enough to think about the extent to which our house pets are responsible for declines of songbird populations? What other human activities reduce populations of songbirds and other birds from... More

Friday, October 4, 2013

Knowledge exchange: CU and EC and Nunavut Arctic College

  Worldwide, scientists are being asked to become better communicators. Wildlife research presents a unique opportunity for science communication in northern communities. Between 2007 and 2011, Environment Canada and Carleton University partnered with the Nunavut Arctic College and other agencies to provide a learning opportunity that integrated... More

Friday, September 20, 2013

HSTP Hosts Wu

The Health, Science, Technology and Policy graduate program at Carleton hosted its first evening public lecture this year, just yesterday (Sept 19th). Dr. Felicia Wu, the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Michigan State University, delivered a very exciting and interesting lecture entitled: "Improving... More

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

E-cited me!

Nowadays, citations rates are far from simple. When I was gearing up in my research career, there were many fewer journals in one’s field.  The graduate students and PDFs all aspired to get published in those journals that were high impact journals.  Then it became clear that even papers in lower-impact journals could themselves... More

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

News From NSERC

If you are applying for a NSERC DG or SAP in the fall of 2013, you might want to read this latest update from NSERC sent April 24th, 2013. Read on... NSERC Common CV Template Now Available In preparation for the launch of the Research Portal in early May 2013, NSERC is gradually phasing in the... More

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Grad Student Activities

Jennifer Provencher, a PhD student, co-supervised by myself and Grant Gilchrist (NWRC), went to a workshop that was sponsored by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) which is a working group of the Arctic Council. The workshop was in Saint Petersburg Russia from April 22-24. The meeting was themed "Action Adaptations for a... More

Monday, April 15, 2013

Carleton Research Partners

Much of the research that is conducted today relies on partnerships sometimes between academe and not-for-profits or industry, or between academe and various levels of government, or between several agencies and institutions combined. Such research is thought to be of an immediate societal impact insofar as stakeholders of the research outcomes... More

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Visiting researchers

For the past three months and for the next three months, the Forbes' Lab is hosting two researchers from CNRS Montpellier France. Dr. Karen McCoy is a molecular ecologist and evolutionary biologist who specializes in local host adaptation of seabird ticks and its influence on Lymes bacteria transmission. Dr. Thierry Boulinier is interested in... More

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

CFRnet: a call for a network of Canadian Field Stations

Some time ago, a group of colleagues and myself were hosted at University of Toronto's Koffler Scientific Reserve to discuss, among other things, the future of Canadian Field Stations (mostly University based field stations). We decided that the time was coming to network and share best practices and this wiki site provides some of the... More

Monday, April 8, 2013

Picture of unidentified damselfly from India

 A sketch of an unidentified damselfly with larval water mites engorging on its wings. The picture was drawn by one of my former students, Kathyrn Norman, and was sketched from a photograph taken in Bannerghatta, India, that was available from  the web. To my knowledge, this is the first report of mites engorging on... More

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Carleton Professor Leads Team to Investigate Mysteries Behind Killer Bird Disease

Avian Cholera is the most important infectious disease affecting wild North American waterfowl. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada has just awarded Carleton University Professor Mark Forbes and a team of researchers more than half a million dollars over the next three years to study this bacterial disease in Arctic... More

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Can Ravens Share Information and Co-operate?

In the same year Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen and Carl Von Frisch jointly won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their pioneering work in animal behavior, the Israeli behaviorist, Amotz Zahavi, hypothesized that some birds aggregate in roosts to share information on locations of profitable food sources. Lorenz shared the Nobel prize, in part,... More

Monday, March 8, 2010

Viewpoint by Mark Forbes — How important is (Carleton) research?

Carleton is like most universities: There is a mix of basic and applied research on our campus. It’s the nature of this “mix” that defines our institution and gives us an edge along certain of the many possible paths of discovery and innovation. As a newly-appointed AVP, I am concerned that we identify our... More

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Little Things Matter: Exploring Biology at the Parasitic Level

By Laura Cummings The word parasite holds many meanings - in ancient Greece, a professional dinner guest, and in modern times, a greedy person. Mark Forbes, an associate biology professor at Carleton University, focuses on the most scientific type of parasite. He studies how parasites can affect animal populations, in particular parasite-host... More

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