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Research assistant positions in ecology, summer 2025

Three research assistant positions in ecology are offered for May-August 2025:

Evaluation of the success of Miyawaki microforests in the Montreal region

a) Identify and locate tree in 20 microforests
b) Measure the height and DBH of all trees and assess their health
c) Inventory of spontaneous vegetation
d) Environmental characterization: soil chemistry, humidity, temperature, etc.

Impact of urbanization and the emerald ash borer on Montreal’s woodlands

a) Inventory of undergrowth biodiversity, identification and measurement of trees
b) Assessment of tree health

Send your CV and transcripts to: stephanie.pellerin.1@umontreal.ca and patrick.boivin@umontreal.ca

Gilles Vincent president of the board of directors of the IABG

Gilles Vincent was recently elected president of the board of directors of the International Association of Botanic Gardens (IABG) for the next three years. This council includes 12 members, from 11 countries and 5 continents.

Founded in 1954, one of the aims of the IABG is to promote international cooperation between botanical gardens and arboretums and other similar organizations managing collections of living plants as well as cooperation between the staff of these institutes.

The IRBV shines at Célébrer les arts et les sciences

The Célébrer les arts et les sciences ceremony brought together students and donors on 19 November 2024. Congratulations to the scholarship holders and warm thanks to the philanthropists who make these awards and scholarships possible!

Congratulations to our students who represented the IRBV so well!

Jérôme Burkiewicz – Marie-Victorin Excellence Award

$5000 scholarship awarded to a doctoral student from the IRBV (département de sciences biologiques) to highlight the excellence of their research work. The Marie-Victorin Excellence Award was named in honor of the founder of the Montreal Botanical Institute.

Jérôme Burkiewicz, Roberta D’Camp and Noah Boodhoo – Fonds de bourses en sciences biologiques

Sscholarships of $1500 at the Ph.D. level and $1000 at the master’s level awarded to encourage graduate students who stand out for their academic record and research achievements.

Béatrice Gervais-Bergeron – Marcelle-Gauvreau Excellence Award

The Marcelle-Gauvreau Excellence Award worth $5000 is awarded annually to a graduate student at the IRBV who stands out for their civic commitment, their involvement in the transfer of knowledge to the community and for quality of their research. This scholarship was established following donations from the Friends of the Botanical Garden and the IRBV.

Laurie St-Fleur – Excellence scholarship in climate change

$2500 scholarships awarded to a graduate student in biological sciences who has an excellent academic record and demonstrates an interest in studying the impact of climate change as part of their thesis project.

For more information regarding this event, we invite you to consult the website: https://fas.umontreal.ca/index.php?id=38471#sciences-biologiques

Undergraduate research assistant in wetland restoration

Stéphanie Pellerin’s laboratory and the RARE project team are looking for an undergraduate research assistant (biology, environment or forestry) to work on the restoration of wetlands.

Duties include:

  • botanical inventories
  • work in greenhouses and in the field
  • setting up experimental designs

The employment is 35 hours/week, for a duration of 12 to 16 weeks.

To apply, send resumé, letter and report card to patrick.boivin@umontreal.ca

Ph.D. project as part of the international and interdisciplinary BIORESTORM project

Ph.D. project open as part of the international and interdisciplinary BIORESTORM project: anticipating biological succession in rehabilitation of long-term operated nature-based solutions for stormwater treatment in different climate zones.

This Ph.D. project will focus on the impact of long-termoperation on plant succession and biodiversity in stormwater management phytotechnologiesor Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in different climate
zones.

Project objectives:

  • To determine the trajectories of plant succession in phytotechnologies for stormwater management according to their initial composition and the evolution of the system
  • To identify the most resistant and resilient species to the conditions of phytotechnologies for stormwater management (e.g.: stress due to pollutants, competition and invasions of exotic plants) and their functional traits
  • To guide the choice of appropriate plants for planting or rehabilitation in order to optimize the long-term functioning of phytotechnologies

For more information, see this PDF document.

Béatrice Gervais-Bergeron, recipient of the 2024 Marcelle-Gauvreau Scholarship

Béatrice Gervais-Bergeron is the winner of the 2024 edition of the Marcelle-Gauvreau scholarship awarded by the IRBV, in collaboration with The Friends of the Montreal Botanical Garden.

Following a remarkable career in environmental biology at McGill University, Béatrice joined Michel Labrecque‘s laboratory in 2019 to complete her master’s degree. She also enriched her experience with a six-month stay at the University of Santiago, in Chile. In 2020, due to the quality of her file, she was accelerated to a doctorate. Her project focuses on phytoremediation, focusing on the functional traits of plants in contaminated and ultramafic environments. Determined and demonstrating an excellent spirit of synthesis, she has already published three articles in renowned scientific periodicals, before the end of her doctorate, which she plans to defend in the fall of 2024.

In addition to her excellent scientific background, Béatrice stands out for her commitment to student life and society. In South America, she participated in mutual aid activities with humanitarian organizations such as Amnesty International and a farm school in Bolivia.

During her doctorate, Béatrice was often responsible for the organization of events or conferences (32nd Symposium of Biological Sciences Students, workshops and visits as part of the annual congress of the Société québécoise de phytotechnologies, Night of Space for Life researchers, for example).

Since 2020, she has been president of Phyto Action, a non-profit organization that supports phytotechnology projects and creates educational documentation related to these practices.

Jérôme Burkiewicz, recipient of the 2024 Marie-Victorin Excellence Award

Jérôme Burkiewicz is the 2024 winner of the Marie-Victorin scholarship. Jérôme began a master’s degree in 2021 before making an accelerated transition to a doctorate under the supervision of Simon Joly, researcher at the Botanical Garden and the IRBV as well as associate professor at the Université de Montréal. His doctoral project focuses on the evolution of the floral morphology of Cape Impatiens in urban environments.

Urbanization drastically modifies the environment in which organisms live, but it offers a unique chance to study its effects on the evolution of species and their interactions. This project aims to test whether urbanization has repercussions on the evolution of Cape Impatiens flowers by affecting its environment and its pollinator communities, by monitoring natural populations, from common gardens to greenhouses. and using genetic studies. This project also makes it possible to better predict the consequences of various abiotic changes linked to urbanization, such as increased temperatures, changes in precipitation regimes or even the fragmentation of habitats, on flowers and their interaction with pollinators. Studying the consequences of urbanization on the genetic and plastic components of plant morphology is essential to integrate, into decision-making, measures for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services (in particular the interaction of plants and pollinators to ensure the pollination).

In addition to the achievements related to his doctoral project, Jérôme has already made significant scientific contributions during his young career. Among other things, Jérôme contributed to developing a photogrammetry protocol to make 3D models of flowers, a study published in the journal New Phytologist in 2023. Jérôme also participated in a study by the Kierzkowski laboratory during his Master 1 internship which gave him earned co-authorship on a scientific article published in Nature Communications. Finally, he also carried out field work for a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution on latitudinal gradients of predation pressure in urban and non-urban environments, under the direction of Anna Hargreaves of McGill University.

Jérôme is also committed to transmitting knowledge to a wider audience. For example, he participated in two editions of the Space for Life Researchers’ Night (2021, 2022) and he popularized his work during the Citizen Spring activity organized by Space for Life in 2024. He also published a popular article in the spring issue of Quatre-Temps magazine in 2024.

Several M.Sc and Ph.D projects on the revegetation of wetlands

The RARE Project brings together a team of multidisciplinary researchers and nine partner organizations from the public, private and non-profit sectors. Their objective is to better coordinate the efforts of scientists, managers and stakeholders in the field to implement concerted actions to restore wetlands on mineral soil.

Projects may include experiments in greenhouses, in the field (partner sites in urban or agricultural environments) in different regions of Quebec.

Several master’s and doctoral projects are available.
Research themes:
– Optimization of seeding techniques
– Testing innovative revegetation techniques for marshes and swamps
– Identification of target species for restoration

For more information, follow this link.

 

Jacques Brodeur receives the UQAR excellence prize

Jacques Brodeur received the UQAR excellence prize during the UQAR convocation a few weeks ago. This award aims to recognize the exceptional professional career of a UQAR graduate, their social and community commitment and their influence.

Congratulations Jacques!

Researchers' Night 2024

The 5th edition of Researchers’ Night will take place on November 15, from 7 pm to midnight, at the Planetarium and the Biodome. Visitors will experience television programming straight from the 2000s – TV Guide included!
In a festive atmosphere, more than a hundred scientists from about thirty organizations will come together to meet the public and introduce them to their daily work, the issues that drive them as well as share their contagious passion. In addition to shows, one-on-one meetings, conferences and demonstration tables, it will be possible to discover the Biodome ecosystems at night.
Places are limited, reserve your tickets now!

A.I. For Nature, an upcoming conference

A.I. For Nature: From Science to Impact

By Tanya Berger-Wolf, director of the ABC Global Climate Center Imageomics Institute and professor at the Ohio State University

Tanya will discuss several exciting new technological advances in the areas of camera technology, acoustics, eDNA, and more.

Monday 7 October 2024 at the amphitheater of the Biodiversity Centre

Alain Cuerrier on La ruée vers l'herbe

Alain Cuerrier was interviewed for six episodes of La ruée vers l’herbe on MaTV. You can view the episodes at the following link.

More resilient cities during heavy rains

Danielle Dagenais and her student Hannah Brown were interviewed about sponge parks and other green infrastructures that have the capacity to retain and even absorb large quantities of water, for example during heavy rains.

La végétation urbaine en rempart contre l’eau. Gino Harel interviews Danielle Dagenais and Hannah Brown at Années-Lumière. Listen on Ohdio.

Inondations: les rues et les parcs éponges, la nouvelle «lubie de la gauche»? Andrea Lubeck interviews Danielle Dagenais. Read on 24Heures.ca.

Photo by Gino Harel, Radio-Canada.

Publication of "Unrooted" by Erin Zimmerman

Erin Zimmerman, an IRBV student who completed her Ph.D. in 2014 under the supervision of Anne Bruneau, had her very first book published last spring.

In Unrooted: botany, motherhood and the fight to save an old science, she tells us about her childhood in rural Ontario where she developed her fascination with plants. She explains how this obsession led her to university to become a professional botanist.

This career choice was a challenge for Erin because natural history – the collection, description and classification of species – is in many ways a science in decline. But for Erin, it’s a science worth fighting for.

In her memoir, Erin traces her career path and argues for the importance of maintaining natural history research, not just because there are still around 100 000 species of plants yet to be discovered, but also because this science is crucial in the fight against the loss of biodiversity. Unfortunately, despite her passion for the study of plants, Erin’s career choices were restricted by lack of institutional support and subtle but pervasive sexism in academia.

Unrooted is a scientific memoir, a glimpse into someone’s ordinary life in a fascinating field. It is about plants and what it means to be a woman in the world of research, an environment that excludes mothers and those with responsibilities outside the laboratory. Erin reflects on her experiences as a new parent, her decision to leave her post-graduate research position, and how she found a new way to stay in the field she loves. It ends with a call to action for all those who wish to contribute to the fight to save species.

Definitions and vocabulary of invasive species

Jacques Brodeur was recently interviewed by Évelyne Charuest for Plateau Sciences et Santé on Ici Radio Canada’s Pénélope show. The title of his column was Definitions and vocabulary of invasive species.

Listen in French on Ohdio.

Ariane Vossen wins the SPPQ Sackston Prize

Ariane Vossen, a master’s student under the supervision of Jacques Brodeur, won the Sackston Prize from the Société de protection des plantes du Québec (SPPQ) for the best student presentation at the 2024 annual meeting.

The title of the presentation was: Studies of diapause induction factors in Leptopilina japonica and Ganaspis brasiliensis, parasitoids of Drosophila suzukii.

Two research assistant positions

Two research assistant positions in ecology are offered for July-August (possibility of continuing in the fall):

Evaluation of the success of Miyawaki microforests in the Montreal region

a) Identify and locate trees in 20 microforests
b) Measure the height and DBH of all trees and assess their health
c) Inventory of spontaneous vegetation
d) Environmental characterization: soil chemistry, humidity, temperature, etc.

Impact of urbanization and the emerald ash borer on Montreal’s woodlands

a) Inventory of undergrowth biodiversity, identification and measurements of trees
b) Assessment of tree health
c) Environmental characterization: soil chemistry, humidity, temperature, etc.

Biodiversity of herbaceous wastelands in Montreal

a) Inventory of floral diversity
b) Inventory of entomological diversity

Available now. Contact stephanie.pellerin.1@umontreal.ca for more information.

The mystery of the Montreal melon finally solved?

The mystery of the Montreal melon finally solved?

Étienne Léveillé-Bourret is being interviewed in this week’s La Presse.

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2024-06-08/le-mystere-du-melon-de-montreal-enfin-resolu.php

Photo: Patrick Sansfaçon, La Presse