Will Bugg

climate change is causing larger temperature variations BUT we know very little about how variable temperatures impact sensitive, developing fish

in this new study with @tblanchard.bsky.social & @trishschulte.bsky.social we found surprising impacts during development and after hatch!!

🧪👩🏻‍🔬 🐠 🌎 🌐👇🏼

A photo of two Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) embryos. Photo credit: Tessa Blanchard

Atlantic killifish are robust little fish, but now @tblanchard.bsky.social & co reveal that fluctuating temperatures while the embryos are developing in the egg can have beneficial and damaging consequences

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Excited to share another paper from work I did during my PhD with @trishschulte.bsky.social and @madisonearhart.bsky.social. We looked at how fish embryos respond differently to constant and fluctuating temperatures! 🐟

#sturgeonsaturday 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐

the last 2 years i’ve been investigating why these giant fish are dying across BC

and i’ve started to identify the stressors that could be driving mortality!!

if you want to learn more, check out this video: tinyurl.com/4m4xxrkh

tldr; it’s getting hot out here yall 🥵

in the field for #sturgeonsaturday

ive spent the last 2 yrs investigating what is killing BC white sturgeon

unfortunately, these deaths continue & we’ve had over 50 adult sturgeon die in the fraser river in the last ~6 weeks

every fish i sample is another step closer to solving the mystery🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐

madison holding a sturgeon prior to release on a boat in the fraser river

hiiiii i’ve been mia for a bit but im back with looooots of field work photos - we’re doing some really cool sturgeon science this summer!!

here i am, in my element holding my fave creature, trying to save the dinosaurs one sturgie at a time 🫶🏼

#sturgeonsaturday everyday 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🐟🌎🌐

a sticker illustrating 3 women wearing an NSF lab coat, a NASA shirt, and NIH scrubs with the phrase girls just wanna have funds underneath. a portion of proceeds from this sticker will go directly to stand up for science to support funding initiatives

the same sticker in the wild on my very dented water bottle with the ocean in the background

out of pure rage for the obliteration of science funding i made a sticker

cuts are disproportionately impacting EC scientists & women~particularly Black women and women of color

25% of proceeds will go to @standupforscience.bsky.social to keep fighting! 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎

plz share widely
tinyurl.com/5n7kjbwt

a screenshot of the interview page showing a picture of madison and a blurb describing the csz outstanding thesis award

i was recently interviewed by @csz-sczofficial.bsky.social about my phd, science, art, really all things 👩🏻‍🔬🧪🐠🌎

still over the moon i got this award, sometimes i am still reminding myself that i did a phd 🥲

check it out! 👇🏼

blog.csz-scz.ca/2025/06/30/s...

a close up of a baby sturgeon, in water, held in a yellow sling

the horrors persist, but so do closeups of baby sturgeon

everyone say hi to the cutest fish alive!!

#sturgeonsaturday 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐

madison standing on a boat - holding a 2-3 year old white sturgeon about 16 inches long prior to release

everyone! look at this baby sturgeon!

literally the cutest creature to ever exist but unfortunately we have less and less of them in BC

with juvenile recruitment issues it’s always so awesome to find lil untagged bbs - this trip 5/14 of our sturgeon were untagged!

#sturgeonsaturday everyday🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐

we’re so back baby!!

an excellent start to the sturgeon field season today :)

here’s a 7ft sturgeon being released

#sturgeonsaturday everyday 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐🦑

have yall ever seen a 1day old sturgeon?? right out of the egg?

WELL NOW YOU HAVE

barely any eyes, no gills, just vibes & yes that tube is their beating heart 💓

(microscope vid so plz forgive the lighting)

#sturgeonsaturday everyday 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎

(p.s. get some sturgie stickers tinyurl.com/3dd65s4p)

madison standing in the fraser river smiling while holding a white sturgeon in a water filled sling prior to release

a photo of sticker illustrations of all 8 species of sturgeon found in north america

it’s #sturgeonsaturday👩🏻‍🔬🌎🧪🌐

did you know there are 8 sturgeon species in N. America?

spread across the continent, they are found in rivers, estuaries & the sea

i made stickers for each sturgie that lives here, so you can always have your fave fish with you

www.madisonearhart.com/category/sti...

its #sturgeonsaturday!

did you know that some sturgeon make very long spawning migrations? Similar to salmon, some species of sturgeon migrate hundreds of miles from the sea to rivers to spawn

after navigating a long journey once they are in freshwater they will release millions of eggs! 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐

An intuitive visualization of the regulatory layers influencing the stoichiometry of a protein complex.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

madison holding a bouquet of lilacs

first market of the summer means lilacs!! 🌞

an illustration of north america surrounded by the sturgeon species that live here. each sturgeon has a colored blob beneath that is associated with dots on the map. the size of the dots on the map correspond to the area a study was done and the amount of studies done in that population

a salmon lifecycle illustration from embryos to spawning adults

an illustration of a larval to juvenile sturgeon transition and all the RNA seq go terms that changed in the gill during development

an experimental design figure illustrating sturgeon and their treatments in the middle with dates of sampling on the left side and what was sampled on the right side

it’s #sturgeonsaturday 🧪🌎👩🏻‍🔬🎨

today i want to highlight the illustrations ive made for sturgie sci comm & publications

im super passionate about visual storytelling - below is my portfolio, check it out :)

need help with a graphical abstract? exp design? a talk? hit me up!

madisonearhart.com

madison standing in front of the final slide of her talk showing her art logo and contact information

the first slide from the talk showing an illustration of an aquatic environment and a statement that says “i weave together basic and applied science to inform conservation under climate change”

madison standing in front of a slide describing an F0 - F2 rainbow trout generational study

yesterday i was given an award for the outstanding phd thesis of the year from @csz-sczofficial.bsky.social

i gave a talk about my phd, full of science & art

i focused on how fish cope with environmental change & the importance of art in science 🧪🌎👩🏻‍🔬🌐🎨

here is the full talk: tinyurl.com/257jkbmh

Herring spawned poleward following fishery-induced collective memory loss - Nature A critically low abundance of older herring due to age-selective fisheries resulted in an approximately 800-km poleward shift in main spawning.

This is a fascinating study on fishing altering fish migratory patterns.

It’s management implications are important.

I’ve argued that Limit Reference Points also need to consider the ecological role of the fished stock.

This is an example of why that matters.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#sturgeonsaturday! 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐

not only are the sturgeon in the Nechako river facing no babies, the last few years there have been unexplained mortality events in the large adults 😩 (typically at the end of summer)

Im investigating what may be causing these mortalities and the role of climate warming 🧐

here’s the paper that investigated the otter predation on lil sturgies - when going out to find tags researchers were lead to otter latrines, where they had pooped out sturgeon tags after eating them 😩

cdnsciencepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

#sturgeonsaturday all week! 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌐🌎

because there are no larvae surviving in the Nechako river, the mandated hatchery releases 2 y.o. sturgeon to increase the population

it took trial & error in deciding what size to release sturgeon, turns out small sturgeon are otter snacks 🦦

3 y.o. sturgie 👇🏼

New @science.org
Exposomics. We're not doing nearly enough to understand and mitigate our toxic environmental exposures. A very insightful perspective
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

happy #earthday!

we’re gonna do #sturgeonsaturday everyday this week!

I’m in northern BC on the Nechako river, with a super endangered population of white sturgeon with no babies seen in 70 years! 😭

I’m here to assess stressors in this population while we fish for hatchery broodstock 🧪🌎🌐👩🏻‍🔬

#sturgeonsaturday (all week!!)

you may be thinking wow what do you mean no baby Nechak sturgeon in 70 years?

i’m gonna describe some of the problems the Nechako sturgeon face and what is being done to solve these problems

so follow along (if you love sturgeon and really who doesn’t)!!

🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌐🌎

madison wearing a white top and navy polkdot skirt smiling standing on a ferry

this #sturgeonsaturday looks a little different!!

on the way to a sturgeon gala to meet with some incredible people who are all working to save white sturgeon 🫶🏼

doing science together with different rights and shareholders gives us a chance to make lasting conservation changes! 🧪👩🏻‍🔬🌎🌐

an illustration by madison detailing the changes in the gill during development in lake sturgeon. There are illustrations for GO terms in 3 bubbles. One bubble for each population and one bubble showing shared changes for both populations. there is a small sturgeon growing to a larger a sturgeon illustrated at the top.

#sturgeonsaturday on a thursday 😱 whaaaaat!! 🧪🌎👩🏻‍🔬🦑

new paper and illustration 🥲

we investigated what happens to the gill transcriptome during development in lake sturgeon

turns out bb sturgeon are using epigenetics (histone mods & dna methylation) and cell death (apoptosis) to make grown up gills

This work was conducted in collaboration with @madisonearhart.bsky.social @biomatt.bsky.social @trishschulte.bsky.social as well as Gary Anderson and Ken Jeffries at @umanitoba.bsky.social

All illustrations are by @madisonearhart.bsky.social

Different process which changed in the gill of lake sturgeon during early development.

New lake sturgeon work out investigating transcriptional shifts in the gill during early development

mRNA changes associated with histone modifications, DNA methylation, and apoptosis were conserved across both populations, as well as population-specific processes

🧪🌎🌐🐠

tinyurl.com/bdekwzed