Susan Gordon

@jessealston.bsky.social

Graduate-student stipends in Canada below the poverty line Students struggle to make ends meet despite recent boosts to federal scholarships, study finds.

Despite a boost to federal scholarships last year, stipends for most graduate students in Canada fall below the poverty line. My story for @natureportfolio.bsky.social 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Atlantic puffins are perilously attracted to artificial light, new study shows As the long summer days of August turn into nights, a few dozen volunteers gather in the small community of Witless Bay, a tiny town on the Atlantic coast about a half-hour’s drive south of St. John’s...

A nice write-up about our recent work on light attraction in fledgling Atlantic Puffins #science🧪#seabird #ornithology @tbrownbirds.bsky.social news.mongabay.com/2025/01/atla...

Temperature shapes movement and habitat selection by a heat-sensitive ungulate - Landscape Ecology Context Warmer weather caused by climate change poses increasingly serious threats to the persistence of many species, but animals can modify behavior to mitigate at least some of the threats posed by...

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"Our analysis included 153 moose-months from 24 moose."

This turn of phrase really made me smile today, thank you Alston et al.!

And also thanks for writing a cool paper 😉

Monarch butterflies to be listed as a threatened species in US U.S. wildlife officials have decided to extend federal protections to monarch butterflies. Fish and Wildlife Service officials on Tuesday announced plans to list monarchs as threatened.

A WWF report showed that monarch butterflies occupied only 2.2 acres (.9 hectares) of their traditional overwintering groves in 2023-24, a 59% decrease in area from the previous year

🌎🧪
apnews.com/article/mona...

Publishers are selling papers to train AIs — and making millions of dollars Generative-AI models require massive amounts of data — scholarly publishers are licensing their content to train them.

"Publishers selling papers to train AIs" was perhaps not the direction I was hoping to see the already questionable scientific publishing scheme take 🧪 🌍 #AcademicSky #WomenInSTEM

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Urban Wonder: Rare Butterfly Thrives in One of Ecuador's Largest Cities Found in greater numbers in Loja, Ecuador, than nearby wild areas, could Catasticta truncata be a flagship species for promoting conservation in the region?

Don't ignore cities. 🏙️

This rare butterfly 🦋 is doing better in Loja, Ecuador 🇪🇨 than in surrounding, less-urban areas.

It's part of an amazing series of ecological interactions anchored by a mistletoe.

🧪🪳🪲🌎

entomologytoday.org/2024/12/06/u...

A wolf walks into a flower — and appears to pollinate it The bees and ... the wolves? Turns out, the Ethiopian wolf may be a pollinator, too.

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Such a cool story - wolves as potential pollinators in Ethiopia!
DOI: 10.1002/ecy.4470

Thank you! And thanks for the time you're giving to the community in doing this :)

We are looking for contributors to our new series on the Methods Blog, exploring the experiences of ecologists conducting research in remote field stations during the holiday season🎄 Please get in touch if you would like to find out more! 🌎 🧪

Hello! Would appreciate being added, I'm a postdoc in ecology and here's my google scholar page: scholar.google.com/citations?us...

On Blackfoot land, the buffalo roam | The Narwhal The Blackfoot Confederacy is working toward free-roaming buffalo crossing the border once again — and revitalizing traditional hunts

The Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy is working to bring back herds of plains bison (aka buffalo).

Besides being amazing in their own right, buffalo are walking ecosystems and ecosystem engineers. Their presence would reinvigorate the grasslands. 🦬

🧪🌎

thenarwhal.ca/blackfoot-gu...

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Map of 15 grassland sites used for this project in Ontario, Canada. Sites range widely in size, and are embedded in a largely forested matrix, fragmented by roads, a few houses, and two gravel pits.

A figure showing how the density of butterflies with weak, intermediate, or strong mobility changes with site isolation. Weak disperses occur at higher densities in more connected sites, intermediate dispersers occur at similar densities across the isolation gradient, and strong dispersers occur at higher densities in more isolated sites.

Looking forward to being part of the growing scientific community here!

Here's my favourite project from my PhD, where we showed that dispersal ability mediates trophic interactions and habitat connectivity to alter the composition of a butterfly metacommunity

Open access doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

Wood-poppy, a species at risk in Canada. Photo credit: J.L. McCune.

[1/4] What is the status of plant conservation in Canada? 🌿

In this study led by JL McCune, we surveyed 243 practitioners in plant conservation, ecology or evolution to answer the question.

We came up with seven recommendations.

➡️ www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/facets-2023-0216

📷 : JL McCune

Would love to be added! Currently a postdoc, just moving over to BlueSky :)