RESEARCH
Research
Understanding how populations respond to changing environmental conditions is a major research focus in biology. Environmental stressors directly or indirectly affect an individual's fitness through impacts at cellular-, tissue- and whole-organism levels of biological organization. We work broadly in the fields of animal physiology, conservation genomics, and ecotoxicology. We specialize in using molecular approaches to study species that are of conservation concern.
Effects of temperature on ectotherms
Water temperature is the single most important factor that determines the distributions of aquatic species. Consequently, understanding the sublethal thermal limits of populations that indicate when elevated temperatures begin to harm the animal is fundamental for predicting the consequences of climate change on aquatic animals. Fishes respond to thermal stressors through changes in gene expression as a part of an integrated organismal response. Although a transcriptional profile provides a snapshot of the cellular response to environmental stressors in fishes at a given moment in time, the application of non-lethal tissue sampling approaches allows for linking transcriptomic signatures with fitness-related endpoints, such as longer-term survival, spawning success and growth.
High-throughput tools for quantifying stress in fish
Through the GEN-FISH project, we have been developing high-throughput qPCR “gene chips” for rapid transcriptional profiling to understand signatures of stress in fishes in North America. We have developed multi-species stress transcriptional profiling (STP) chips for many of the major groups of species in North America for the GEN-FISH project, however we focus mainly on salmonids, sturgeons and lampreys. Using the OpenArray technology for the STP-Chips, we can run approximately 11k qPCR reactions at a time.
Ecotoxicology
We conduct research on understanding the effects of specific contaminants or complex chemical mixtures found in wastewater effluent on aquatic ectotherms. It is important to determine if contaminants introduced into aquatic ecosystems elicit a biological effect. Using transcriptional profiling, we can begin to understand the cellular responses to contaminants on their own or in a mixture. Much of our work examines how chemical pesticides used as lampricides can affect the target species, sea lamprey, and non-target species at the cellular level.
Climate change and pollution in the Arctic
We have been conducting studies examining the effects of anthropogenic activity on coastal ecosystems on Baffin Island in Nunavut. One of the consequences of climate change will be an increase in human population and human activity in the North, which will result in more wastewater pollution. We are studying the effects of human activity on the truncate soft-shell clam, an important food resource for communities on Baffin Island.