Harnessing open science practices to teach ecology and evolutionary biology using interactive tutorials.

Open science skills are increasingly important for a career in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) as efforts to make data and analyses publicly available continue to become more commonplace. While learning core concepts in EEB, students are also expected to gain skills in conducting open science to prepare for future careers. Core open science skills like programming, data sharing, and practices that promote reproducibility can be taught to undergraduate students alongside core concepts in EEB.

We know very little about pollination in the Rich (Orchidaceae: Orchidoideae).

The Rich. (Orchidoideae) comprise a speciose genus of orchids primarily in the northern hemisphere, with up to 200 known species worldwide. Individual species are known to self-pollinate, but many rely on insect pollinators with characteristics such as floral color, timing of floral odor emissions, nectar rewards, and spur length associated with particular pollination syndromes.

Clinical value of Alzheimer's disease biomarker testing.

Introduction: In the Investigating the Impact of Alzheimer's Disease Diagnostics in British Columbia (IMPACT-AD BC) study, we aimed to understand how Alzheimer's disease (AD) cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker testing-used in medical care-impacted medical decision-making (medical utility), personal decision-making (personal utility), and health system economics.

Methods: The study was designed as an observational, longitudinal cohort study. A total of 149 patients were enrolled between February 2019 and July 2021.

Human disturbance in riparian areas disrupts predator-prey interactions between grizzly bears and salmon.

Wildlife must increasingly balance trade-offs between the need to access important foods and the mortality risks associated with human-dominated landscapes. Human disturbance can profoundly influence wildlife behavior, but managers know little about the relationship between disturbance-behavior dynamics and associated consequences for foraging. We address this gap by empirically investigating the consequences of human activity on a keystone predator-prey interaction in a region with limited but varied industrial disturbance.

River conversations: A confluence of lessons and emergence from the Taieri River and the Nechako River.

Drawing on ongoing patterns of learning and relationship, this paper offers a reflection and acknowledgement on the notable influence of two rivers and their role as respected and highly valued "eco-social elders": The Taieri River in Otago, New Zealand, and the Nechako River in northern British Columbia, Canada. The paper is motivated by the question: "". At the heart of the reflection are the themes of confluence and emergence-ways in which we grasp the coming together of things, especially when that combination is more than the sum of their parts.

Tropical forests are home to over half of the world's vertebrate species.

Tropical forests are renowned for their astonishing diversity of life, but the fundamental question of how many species occur in tropical forests remains unanswered. Using geographic range maps and data on species habitat associations, we determined that tropical forests harbor 62% of global terrestrial vertebrate species, more than twice the number found in any other terrestrial biome on Earth. Up to 29% of global vertebrate species are endemic to tropical forests, with more than 20% of these species at risk of extinction.

Sympatry leads to reduced body condition in chickadees that occasionally hybridize.

Both abiotic and biotic drivers influence species distributions. Abiotic drivers such as climate have received considerable attention, even though biotic drivers such as hybridization often interact with abiotic drivers. We sought to explore the (1) costs of co-occurrence for ecologically similar species that hybridize and (2) associations between ecological factors and condition to understand how abiotic and biotic factors influence species distributions.

Reduced genetic diversity associated with the northern expansion of an amphibian species with high habitat specialization, , resolved using two types of genetic markers.

Reconstruction of historical relationships between geographic regions within a species' range can indicate dispersal patterns and help predict future responses to shifts in climate. (coastal tailed frog) is an indicator species of the health of forests and perennial streams in the Coastal and Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest of North America. We used two genetic techniques-microsatellite and genotype-by-sequencing (GBS)-to compare the within-region genetic diversity of populations near the northern extent of the species' range (British Columbia, Canada) to two geographic regions in British Columbia and two in Washington, USA, moving toward the core of the range.

Can diet composition estimates using stable isotope analysis of feathers predict growth and condition in nestling mountain bluebirds ()?

Insectivorous birds breeding in seasonal environments provision their dependent young during periods when prey diversity and abundance vary. Consequently, the composition and nutritional value of diets parents feed to their offspring may differ within and among broods, potentially affecting the condition of nestlings. In a population of mountain bluebirds (), we used two methods to estimate diet composition for individual nestlings: direct observation of provisioning using video recordings at 5 and 9 days post-hatch, and stable isotopes of the δC and δN in nestling feathers and prey followed by analysis with mixing models.

Multi-year observations of the high mountain water cycle in the Langtang catchment, Central Himalaya.

The Langtang catchment is a high mountain, third order catchment in the Gandaki basin in the Central Himalaya (28.2°N, 85.5°E), that eventually drains into the Ganges.

Close encounters of the fatal kind: Landscape features associated with central mountain caribou mortalities.

In western Canada, anthropogenic disturbances resulting from resource extraction activities are associated with habitat loss and altered predator-prey dynamics. These habitat changes are linked to increased predation risk and unsustainable mortality rates for caribou (). To inform effective habitat restoration, our goal was to examine whether specific linear disturbance features were associated with caribou predation in central mountain caribou ranges.

Spatial and environmental effects on Coho Salmon life history trait variation.

Adult size, egg size, fecundity, and mass of gonads are affected by trade-offs between reproductive investment and environmental conditions shaping the evolution of life history traits among populations for widely distributed species. Coho salmon have a large geographic distribution, and different environmental conditions are experienced by populations throughout their range. We examined the effect of environmental variables on female size, egg size, fecundity, and reproductive investment of populations of Coho Salmon from across British Columbia using an information theoretic approach.

Development and psychometric evaluation of the Job Demands in Nursing Scale and Job Resources in Nursing Scale: Results from a national study.

Aim: To develop and test the psychometric properties of the Job Resources in Nursing (JRIN) Scale and the Job Demands in Nursing (JDIN) Scale.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Methods: A three-phase process of instrument development and psychometric evaluation was employed: Phase 1: development of a 42-item JRIN Scale and 60-item JDIN Scale through extensive literature review, expert consultation and an iterative content evaluation; Phase 2: pilot survey of 89 nurses and use of item discrimination analysis to estimate the internal consistency reliability of each subscale and reduce the length of each scale; Phase 3: Modified scales were tested in a nationwide survey of 3,822 rural/remote nurses, including use of exploratory factor analysis.

Selection of the sex-linked in mountain pine beetle () driven by enhanced expression during early overwintering.

The mountain pine beetle () is an insect native to western North America; however, its geographical range has recently expanded north in BC and east into Alberta. To understand the population structure in the areas of expansion, 16 gene-linked microsatellites were screened and compared to neutral microsatellites using outlier analyses of and values. One sex-linked gene, (), showed a strong signature of positive selection for neo-X alleles and was analyzed for evidence of adaptive variation.

Community assessment techniques and the implications for rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers.

Diversity estimates play a key role in ecological assessments. Species richness and abundance are commonly used to generate complex diversity indices that are dependent on the quality of these estimates. As such, there is a long-standing interest in the development of monitoring techniques, their ability to adequately assess species diversity, and the implications for generated indices.

Understanding predation risk and individual variation in risk avoidance for threatened boreal caribou.

Predation risk is a driver of species' distributions. Animals can increase risk avoidance in response to fluctuations in predation risk, but questions remain regarding individual variability and the capacity to respond to changes in spatial risk across human-altered landscapes. In northeast British Columbia, Canada, boreal caribou populations declined as roads and seismic lines have increased, which are theorized to increase gray wolf predation.

feedr and animalnexus.ca: A paired R package and user-friendly Web application for transforming and visualizing animal movement data from static stations.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) provides a simple and inexpensive approach for examining the movements of tagged animals, which can provide information on species behavior and ecology, such as habitat/resource use and social interactions. In addition, tracking animal movements is appealing to naturalists, citizen scientists, and the general public and thus represents a tool for public engagement in science and science education. Although a useful tool, the large amount of data collected using RFID may quickly become overwhelming.

Seasonal patterns in reproductive success of temperate-breeding birds: Experimental tests of the date and quality hypotheses.

For organisms in seasonal environments, individuals that breed earlier in the season regularly attain higher fitness than their late-breeding counterparts. Two primary hypotheses have been proposed to explain these patterns: The quality hypothesis contends that early breeders are of better phenotypic quality or breed on higher quality territories, whereas the date hypothesis predicts that seasonally declining reproductive success is a response to a seasonal deterioration in environmental quality. In birds, food availability is thought to drive deteriorating environmental conditions, but few experimental studies have demonstrated its importance while also controlling for parental quality.

Refuge or predation risk? Alternate ways to perceive hiker disturbance based on maternal state of female caribou.

Human presence in natural environments is often a source of stress that is perceived by large ungulates as an increased risk of predation. Alternatively, disturbance induced by hikers creates a relatively predator-free space that may serve as a refuge. We measured the behavioral responses of female caribou to disturbance associated with the presence of hikers during summer in the Gaspésie National Park.

Adaptive and neutral markers both show continent-wide population structure of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae).

Assessments of population genetic structure and demographic history have traditionally been based on neutral markers while explicitly excluding adaptive markers. In this study, we compared the utility of putatively adaptive and neutral single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for inferring mountain pine beetle population structure across its geographic range. Both adaptive and neutral SNPs, and their combination, allowed range-wide structure to be distinguished and delimited a population that has recently undergone range expansion across northern British Columbia and Alberta.

Effects of Emotional Experience in Lexical Decision.

Previous research has examined the effects of emotional experience (i.e., the ease with which words evoke emotion information) in semantic categorization (SCT), word naming, and Stroop tasks (Newcombe et al.

Microbially-accelerated consolidation of oil sands tailings. Pathway II: solid phase biogeochemistry.

Consolidation of clay particles in aqueous tailings suspensions is a major obstacle to effective management of oil sands tailings ponds in northern Alberta, Canada. We have observed that microorganisms indigenous to the tailings ponds accelerate consolidation of mature fine tailings (MFT) during active metabolism by using two biogeochemical pathways. In Pathway I, microbes alter porewater chemistry to indirectly increase consolidation of MFT.

Brain training: rationale, methods, and pilot data for a specific visuomotor/visuospatial activity program to change progressive cognitive decline.

Introduction: Research in the field of the aging brain has evolved to the extent that it is now commonly understood that actively engaging in cognitive tasks provides the potential of being beneficial in affecting the trajectory of age-related cognitive decline. What remains to be examined is the extent, and type, of program required to effect change in aging cognitively impaired individuals.

Methods: To address this issue, a cognitive program focusing on the use of visuospatial (VS)/visuomotor (VM) elements was applied to a group of six older individuals with identified progressive cognitive impairments.

Effects of emotional and sensorimotor knowledge in semantic processing of concrete and abstract nouns.

There is much empirical evidence that words' relative imageability and body-object interaction (BOI) facilitate lexical processing for concrete nouns (e.g., Bennett et al.

Some Insults are Easier to Detect: The Embodied Insult Detection Effect.

In the present research we examined the effects of bodily experience on processing of insults in a series of semantic categorization tasks we call insult detection tasks (i.e., participants decided whether presented stimuli were insults or not).