On 30 June, Bennett defended his M.Sc. thesis titled “Ecology and Taxonomy of Necrophilous Arthropods in Central Alberta“, making him the newest member of the University of Alberta entomology ‘Alumni Pin‘ club. Congratulations, Bennett!
1 January 2025 marks the first day of my being one or all of the following: emeritus professor, professor emeritus or professor emerita (a feminine version). I am now in a two year ‘phased post-retirement’ state in which I am retired as a professor, have been re-hired as Academic Teaching Staff, and have a half workload. Hypothetically – we shall see if I can handle that!
Congratulations to Hannah Stormer, who defended her M.Sc. thesis on 11 June 2024. Hannah’s thesis, “Terrestrial isopods (Isopoda: Oniscidea) in Alberta: species diversity, symbionts, and population structure”, will be publically available this November.
Congrats to Mónica Ayala-Díaz, who defended her Ph.D. thesis one month after that on 11 July 2024! Public release date of “Trematodes in the limelight: Division of labour, life cycles and interactions with other symbionts” is TBD.
Yes, it’s a theme! Congratulations to Veronika Franzova, who successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis titled “The Effect of Snail-Associated Chaetogaster (Annelida: Naididae) on Host Behaviour and Fitness” on 3 Aug 2023.
On 3 Aug 2022, Andrew Cook successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis titled “Feather mite ecology and morphology: exploring how obligate ectosymbionts of birds are impacted by life on hosts.” Excellent job, Andrew! Photo below taken by John Acorn at the traditional post-defence ‘pinning’ ceremony of U of A arthropodologists.
Congratulations to Christine Grams and Hannah Stormer for being awarded NSERC CGS-M scholarships for their M.Sc. studies – well done!
Andrew Cook is in the field with Beth Blanchette, photographing live feather mites on the wings of birds mist-netted at the Beaverhill Bird Observatory southeast of Edmonton. The images will allow Andrew to measure the distances between the barbs of feathers and see how the mites nestle themselves among them.
Zhuoyan successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis “Disentangling a freshwater amphipod–acanthocephalan system from ecological and molecular perspectives” on 29 Nov 2018. To disentangle the system he dissected more than 80,000 Gammarus lacustris from water bodies in and near Edmonton to assess prevalence of Polymorphus spp. acanthocephalans (the red blobs in the amphipods below).
A great set of talks ranging from spider phylogeny to solfugid sex.
Back row (left to right): Jason Bond, Wayne Maddison, Shahan Derkarabetian, Robb Bennett, Janet Sperling, Susan Anthony
Front row (left to right): Tierney Bougie, Sarah Crews, Lauren Esposito, Heather Proctor, Paula Cushing, Catherine Scott, Maydianne Andrade
Very front: Sean McCann
Proctor Lab - where we put biodiversity under the microscope 