Posts

Butterflies for Beginners

By Nature Kids / 11 April 2023

BY NICK CARTER

My experience is that once you’ve been bitten by the entomology bug, you won’t look back. A good place to start, if you are keen to expand your biodiversity horizons, is butterflies. Butterflies provide a good introduction to the world of insects for a variety of reasons. Many species are bright, colourful, and not too hard to find.

Read More

The 20,000-Year-Old Story of the Golden-Crowned Kinglet

By Nature Kids / 11 April 2023

BY DANIKA SCHRAMM

The last Ice Age had an enormous impact on Canadian species, in some cases creating genetically distinct populations. To illustrate how geneticists have arrived at these conclusions, I’m going to walk through a real-world example from my own research on golden-crowned kinglets, one of North America’s smallest passerines.

Read More

Delta Dawn with the Wolves of Wood Buffalo National Park

By Rick Schneider / 13 January 2023

BY ERIN MCCLOSKEY

Wood Buffalo National Park was established in 1922 to protect what remained of Canada’s wood bison. Today, exactly 100 years later, the park supports a population of approximately 3,000 bison, which coexist alongside their natural predator, the wolf. The core range of the park is quite possibly the only place where bison are wolves’ primary prey.

Read More

Exploring the Amazing World of Ants

By Rick Schneider / 13 January 2023

BY JAMES GLASIER

Ants are an integral and ever-present part of Alberta landscapes. Besides being resilient, ants are diverse, numerous, and ecologically important. In this article we take a deep dive into the ants of Alberta.

Read More

What Lies Beneath: The Hidden Life of Fungi

By Steph Weizenbach / 3 October 2022

BY HEATHER ADDY

Fungi are often overlooked because many of them spend much of their lives hidden from us, and out of sight means out of mind. While all fungi share certain features, these organisms display remarkable diversity. Here, we’ll focus on fungi that form mushrooms and other large, complex fruiting bodies.

Read More

Diminished Chorus: The Decline of Grassland Birds

By Steph Weizenbach / 3 October 2022

BY NANCY MAHONY

Few people are lucky enough to experience the dawn chorus on Alberta’s native grasslands — a bewildering concert of ringing trills, melodious gurgles, and jumbled songs. I’ve had the good fortune to do so on many May and June mornings, as a biologist researching grassland songbirds at one of Canada’s largest remaining native prairies, the Suffield National Wildlife Area near Medicine Hat.

Read More

Alberta Red-necks — Grebes, That Is

By Steph Weizenbach / 2 October 2022

BY NICK CARTER

Although the courtship of red-necked grebes is one of nature’s great shows, it often goes unappreciated. The same goes for other grebe species. These birds generally do not inspire the same sense of northern majesty that loons do. Nor are they synonymous with Alberta wetlands the way ducks and geese are. But grebes are just as much a part of our lakes and ponds as all those other birds.

Read More

Pollination on a Wing and a Prayer: Wood Lilies and Swallowtails

By Steph Weizenbach / 1 October 2022

BY LAWRENCE HARDER & TIM SCHOWALTER

Examine the remarkably close relationship between wood lilies and swallowtail butterflies.

Read More