Beer is, perhaps, the oldest fermented beverage known to humankind; and after water and tea, it is the third most popular beverage in the world. These days beer is made from a few key ingredients: water, barley, yeast, and hops. Yet it wasn’t always so
A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Lady Elliot Island at the extreme southern end of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) about 80 km off the Queensland, Australia, coast. Lady Elliot Island is a coral “cay island”; a small, low elevation, sand island on top of
I became an ecologist for the love of being out in leafy forests and wide mountain vistas. I was never thrilled by the idea of staring into a microscope for hours on end. But it’s amazing what a scientist will do to fill in just one little piece
Even though all living lungfishes now exist only on continents in the Southern Hemisphere, they used to be found (millions of years ago) on all continents and proliferated during the Devonian Period or the so-called “Age of Fishes” (~400 million years
While many of us spend a lot of time walking around campus on our way to class, work or otherwise, how many of us truly stop and appreciate the rich natural history which populates our campus?
As we enter this winter holiday season, it is a good time to reflect on the role of biodiversity in our lives, and specifically the role that biodiversity plays in the holiday traditions we all cherish
Last week I gave a talk at PechaKucha Night Vancouver, a public mini-symposium of fast-paced talks which happens every few months. The talks are usually about art, design, and social projects, in which case why was I, a biologist, talking there? Well, watch to find out.
String, rope, twine, cordage – what’s the big deal? String is one of the most important, yet under-acknowledged, of all of human technology – and for the vast majority of our history, it was made from plant and animal fibres.
The rain held off long enough for us to enjoy a fascinating native plant walk around campus. We discovered that many native plants can be found in our own backyard as we shared our morning learning about taxonomy, ecology and the traditional uses of a number of local species
I am spending a good part of my sabbatical year in Brisbane, Australia – capital of Queensland. One thing that I am doing here is fleshing out the outline of a book on notable rivers of North America (a kinda’ mix of biology, geography, and societal aspects of our relationships with rivers)
