News and UpdatesSep 2024 Congrats to Bella and Johanna for their interview on the Quirks and Quarks podcast about their research on urban heat! Listen to it here. Aug 2024 Lots of accomplishments lately! Belated congrats to Chloe Cull for submitting her thesis, to Mackenzie Guest (supported by Jess Liddell) for finishing her first MSc field season, and to Sarah Chamberland (supported by Ella Noyes) for an awesome game test run!
Jul 2024 Congrats to Kayleigh and Riikka for having their systematic map accepted for publication in Environmental Evidence!
Jun 2024 Big congrats to Chloe (and co-author @Mackenzie Guest) for submitting her first MSc paper, and to Riikka Kinnunen □□ for submitting her first postdoc paper. Great work all! Jun 2024 Congrats to Nicole for winning best talk at the DesignLifes symposium. Apr 2024 Congrats to Bella for receiving an FRQNT fellowship to continue her PhD work, and to Nicole for receiving a Monarch Butterfly Fund award to support her balcony garden project! Apr 2024 Lingshan and Bella shared their results to the Ville of Montreal on their respective PhD work on urban forests. Apr 2024 Congrats to Mackenzie and Johanna for their UFOR scholarships for their Master’s! Apr 2024 Congrats to Lauren and Jess for their UFOR undergraduate scholarships for their summer internships! Apr 2024 Congrats to incoming student Johanna (co-supervised with PaqLab) who was awarded a UQAM fellowship! Apr 2024 Congrats to Niraj and Ella who are both awarded an NSERC USRA this summer! May 2022 Congrats to MSc student Michael and Honours student Erica for scholarships from the UFOR urban forestry CREATE! Feb 2024 Congrats to Nicole on being awarded Concordia’s 2024 Safety Ambassador Award for her efforts to advocate for improved fieldwork safety in the Biology department. Feb 2024 Congrats to Nicole on her Mitacs Accelerate internship! Jan 2024 Congrats to MSc student Michael for submitting his thesis on urban soils and earthworms! Dec 2023 Congrats to Chloe who received 2nd place in the FAS Graduate Research Photo Contest for her photo of baby birds from her summer fieldwork! Nov 2023 Some overdue congrats for the lab: Congrats to Emma for an awesome presentation at the annual meeting of all of the partners of the NSERC Alliance group on Urban Forestry, to Lingshan for presenting her research to international collaborators visiting the Kross lab, and to Chloe for presenting a poster at SQEBC on her MSc work. Oct 2023 Congrats to Nicole and Ana Lívia from the Despland lab for winning an award for their poster about butterfly sampling insufficiency in Montreal at the SEQ Annual Meeting. Oct 2023 Congrats to Emma Bacon and Nicole for presenting at the GEO BON conference 2024! Oct 2023 Congrats to Noa for her LEADS CREATE symposium talk and again for completing all the leg-breaking fieldwork this summer with Evan! Oct 2023 Congrats to lab alumni Emily for having her MSc paper accepted! Sept 2023 Welcome to new MSc student Emma, working with us and PaqLab on urban forest diversity and structure! July 2023 Congrats to Nicole and Kayleigh T for launching a series of citizen science events! Find out more for how to get involved here June 2023 Congrats to Emma, Bella, Michael, Riikka, and Niraj for successful conference presentations this summer at CSEE, CSSS, and RE3! May 2023 Welcome to all of our new summer undergraduate researchers (Caytee, Kayleigh, Antonia, Adela, Mackenzie, Lauren, and Evan), as well as incoming MSc student Emma! May 2023 Great coverage of Gail's paper "Decline in wild bee species richness associated with honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) abundance in an urban ecosystem" in Anthropocene Mag , CTV , and more! March 2023 Carly gave a Walrus Talk in Toronto at their event on "A New City" available online here Feb 2023 Our new paper "Decline in wild bee species richness associated with honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) abundance in an urban ecosystem" (led by Gail!) is available open access online. Glad to have this work out in the world, advocating for evidence-based practices for urban biodiversity Jan 2023 We'll be recruiting several undergraduate researchers for this summer - check our "join the lab" page for postings Dec 2022 Gail's Postdoc paper "Decline in wild bee species richness associated with honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) abundance in an urban ecosystem" has been accepted! We're excited to share it soon. Dec 2022 Congrats to Erica for finishing her BSc honours in the lab, and graduating from Concordia. Good luck, and we'll miss you! Dec 2022 Kayleigh's MSc paper "Private trees contribute uniquely to urban forest diversity, structure and service-based traits" is available online. She's been busy fielding lots of media requests to talk about this great work! Oct 2022 Our systematic map protocol "What evidence exists for the use of urban forest management in nature-based carbon solutions and bird conservation" (led by Kayleigh!) is available online. The "bird team" of Kayleigh, Chloe, Riikka, Erica, and Emily are hard at work carrying out this project now! Oct 2022 Congrats to Kayleigh who had *two* manuscripts accepted this week. Looking forward to sharing outcomes from her MSc research on urban tree diversity, as well as a protocol for a new Systematic Map on nature based climate solutions and avian diversity Sept 2022 Lots of travel from lab members: Kayleigh is presenting our community science work at the annual CEF symposium in Sherbrooke, and Erika and Michael are off to the Canadian Urban Forestry Conference and UFOR field course in PEI Sept 2022 Congrats to many lab members on new funding sources: an NSERC CGS-M for Chloe, IELTS Prize for Nicole, DesignLIFES lab exchange award for Bella, and CREATE LEADS fellowship for Noa! Sept 2022 Welcome to new MSc students Chloe and Nicole Aug 2022 Congrats to many lab members (Kayleigh, Bella, Niraj, Carly) on a great set of CSEE/ESA talks at this years annual meeting Aug 2022 We hosted a successful DesignLifes symposium at Concordia. Thanks to Niraj, Nicole, and Lingshan for representing the Ziter lab! July 2022 Welcome to the lab Riikka Kinnunen, our new Horizon postdoc fellow, working with ECCC collaborator Dr Barbara Frei on Nature-based climate solutions and avian biodiversity across Canadian cities May 2022 Congrats to MSc student Michael and Honours student Erica for scholarships from the UFOR urban forestry CREATE! May 2022 Hello Summer! Welcome to Gabrielle, Erica, Laura, and Angelina who will join our lab for fieldwork this summer! April 2022 Congrats to the GLUE team on a new urban evolution paper out in Science! Read Concordia's story here March 2022 Carly has a research highlight in Journal of Animal Ecology on Cryptic Eco-evolutionary Feedbacks in the City Jan 2022 Welcome to the lab Niraj Dayanandan, who will join the DesignLIFES NSERC Create team as an undergraduate RA working on a synthesis of green roof cooling effects Jan 2022 Welcome to the lab PhD student Noa Davidai, co-advised with Emma Despland. We're excited to start branching out into urban forest entomology. Jan 2022 Congrats to PhD student and new mom Fatemeh Izadi on the birth of healthy twins! We can't wait to meet them. Dec 2021 Congratulations on successful MSc defences Kayleigh Hutt-Taylor and Serena Sinno! Dec 2021 Good luck to Maya and Mathieu as they move on from their lab projects - we miss you already! Sept 2021 Welcome to our newest MSc student, Michael Paulauskas! Aug 2021 Congratulations to Gail MacInnis, who is beginning part time as a Research Scientist with GPRC - CRI National Bee Diagnostic Centre while finishing up her postdoc with us Aug 2021 Congrats to the lab’s first MSc graduate, Emily Kroft! Emily has started an exciting new job as the Youth Engagement and Water Policy officer at the Experimental Lakes Area! July 2021 Carly is excited to be part of a new interdisciplinary NFRF project on urban trees and public health. We’re recruiting students to work with colleagues at UQAM/U Sherbrooke June 2021 Our lab is now officially part of the DesignLIFES NSERC Create project. Looking forward to working with great colleagues and students on living infrastructure June 2021 Congratulations to Carly, who has been awarded a New Scholar Concordia University Research Chair in Urban Ecology and Sustainability. June 2021 Welcome to Mitacs Globalink fellow Nicole, and Science College student Mathieu who have joined the lab this summer! May 2021 Excited to be part of the National Park Seek team, studying access and equity of Canadian park and recreation areas April 2021 Congrats to Maya (Biology), Megan (Enviro Sci), and Sarah (Fine Arts), who have all won NSERC USRA/Concordia USRA awards to join the lab this summer. We're so excited for you to join the team! April 2021 Congrats to Emily, who presented her work at the International Association of Landscape Ecology North America (IALE) conference this month, with a student "travel" award! Jan 2021 : Our new work on community science approaches to invasive earthworm monitoring is online in BioScience, co-authored with UW-Madison colleagues. Check it out here or email for access Jan 2021 Welcome to Bella Richmond (PhD student) and Taylor Yeung (Undergraduate) to the lab! And a goodbye and goodluck to our first lab graduate, Kieu-Nhi Vu, who has completed an excellent honours thesis and moved on to an exciting new position! Oct 2020 Excited to have my new course Ecology of Urban Environments featured as an example of how to teach biology in a pandemic. It’s been a challenging term, and I’m thrilled to be featured alongside such excellent colleagues! Sept 2020 Welcome (back) to Katie Philp re-joining the lab for her biology honours project, and welcome to new PhD students Fatemeh Izadi and Lingshan Li, both starting co-supervised theses through the Next Generation Cities institute. Looking forward to expanding our research into increasingly interdisciplinary directions! Aug 2020 Summer flew by! I guess we were too busy with great research and outreach to post updates. Congrats to a wonderful group of summer researchers for successfully navigating such a difficult summer successfully May 2020 I contributed an essay for a collection on hopes for a post-COVID world: L’après-COVID-19: une transition vers des villes plus vertes. Merci à mes collègues pour m’aider à m’exprimer en français! May 2020 Summer is here! Welcome (again) to Kieu-Nhi re-joining the lab for her biology honours project, and welcome to new summer students Majed (NSERC USRA student), Maya (Concordia USRA student), and Eco Canada interns Daniel, Elie, and Emma. Looking forward to a very interesting, socially-distant summer of urban ecology research with a great team May 2020 Congrats to Emily Kroft on receiving an NSERC CGS M, Serena Sinno on her Concordia Sustainability Award, and Gail MacInnis on receiving a postdoc Top Up. Excellent work all around! Jan 2020: Welcome to new Mitacs postdoctoral fellow Gail MacInnis, who will work on competitive interactions between wild and managed bees to inform evidence-based pollinator conservation
Dec 2019: Our new co-authored synthesis on the global impacts of urbanization on biodiversity is online in Nature Sustainability. Check out a great press release here Dec 2019: Have enjoyed great speaking visits to UTM's Centre for Urban Environments, McGill NRS, U de M's IRBV, Kent State Biology, and Queens Biology this semester. Always a pleasure to meet new colleagues and collaborators, and thanks to all the great labs that hosted me! Nov 2019: Proud to have participated in this initiative to plant 185 new native trees on Loyola campus! Thanks to project partner Soverdi, and to all the support from the Concordia community.
Sept 2019: Welcome to MSc students Emily Kroft, Kayleigh Hutt-Taylor, and Serena Sinno!
July 2019: Thanks to CBC, CTV, Montreal Gazette, and more for covering our work on the role of urban forest in reducing summer heat! Check out our Media page to read, listen, and watch
July 2019: Excited to be a Fellow of the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre here at Concordia. Looking forward to collaborating with great colleagues on Sustainability on campus and beyond!
May 2019: Congrats to Kieu-Nhi Vu for receiving a Concordia Undergraduate Student Research Award to work on a pilot project assessing the ecology of vacant lots in Montreal, with community partners. We also welcome new Concordia grad Serena Mohamed, who will be working with us part time this summer, before starting her MSc on native pollinators this fall! Welcome to the team, Kieu-Nhi and Serena!
April 2019:Thrilled to announce we have received NSERC Discovery Grant funding for the Ziter lab! Looking forward to welcoming new graduate students this fall to start our 5 year research program on "Biodiversity-ecosystem service relationships in spatially heterogeneous, dynamic urban landscapes"
March 2019:How many trees do we need to beat urban heat, and where should we plant them? Thrilled that our work on the cooling benefits of urban forests is finally out! Check out our new paper Scale-dependent interactions between tree canopy cover and impervious surfaces reduce daytime urban heat during summer in PNAS, or read the press release here
Feb 2019: New paper: Conducting urban ecology research on private property: advice for new urban ecologists, where we talk about lessons learned in the (urban) field. Excited to see this collaborative work to be out with fellow early career urban ecology colleagues! A good read for your next urban ecology lab meeting?
Jan 2019: Had a great time with Faculty of Arts and Sciences colleagues talking about climate change and the future of cities at the Beyond Disciplines event series.
Dec 2018: And we're live! The Ziter Urban Landscape Ecology Lab is officially up and running at Concordia University. We're still a one-woman team, but recruiting motivated and enthusiastic team members to join the fun (just uh, as soon as we get keys to the lab...).
Nov 2018: I am a co-author on this new report on Nature in the Urban Century, where we discuss where and how to conserve nature for human wellbeing in an urbanizing world.
Aug 2018: Our work on invasive jumping worms is out in Biological Invasions. Thanks to National Geographic for funding this work and UW-Arboretum for hosting the experiments! See publication page for access.
Aug 2018: It's official! I'll be starting as a new faculty member in the Department of Biology at Concordia University on Dec. 1st 2018, as part of the Center for Smart, Sustainable, and Resilient Communities and Cities! Can't wait to launch the Ziter Urban Landscape Ecology Lab.
July 2018: Honoured to have been selected as one of this year's PhD Excellence and Diversity Award winners by the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution. Can't wait to talk about my dissertation in Guelph later this month!
May 2018: I successfully defended my dissertation last month, and have graduated with my PhD! Thankful for all the wonderful support from UW-Madison over the last 3.5 years, and excited for next steps!
March 2018: Our recent work on soil-based ecosystem services is getting some great media attention! Check us out in The New York Times and UW Communications. Read the full paper in Ecological Applications
Dec 2017: Our paper on soil-based urban ecosystem services was accepted in Ecological Applications today. Excited to share this work with you all soon!
Oct 2017: I gave two invited community talks about invasive jumping worms in Madison (Dane County Gardner's Coalition, Madison Christian Community). Great to see enthusiasm for science from my community!
Sept 2017: I organized a city-wide community science event to learn more about invasive jumping worm presence and abundance here in Madison. Great to work with so many dedicated community members and stakeholders!
Aug 2017: I was selected as one of 11 women doctoral and medical students across USA/Canada to receive an endowed PEO Scholar award. I am this year's "Ventura Neale Trust Endowed Scholar". So thankful to PEO International for their continued support!
June 2017: I'm visiting the Wiersma and Leroux labs at Memorial University of Newfoundland for 6 weeks this summer. Excited about new collaborative opportunities.
May 2017: Honoured to have won honourable mention for best student presentation for my US-IALE talk on green infrastructure and ecosystem services.
May 2017: Our organized symposium (with colleague Matt Mitchell) "Accelerating urban ecology in Canada: identifying current research approaches, gaps, and needs in Canadian cities" was presented at CSEE 2017 last week. Great group of speakers, and stay tuned for updates!
April 2017: I was awarded the "Best Talk" at our Wisconsin Ecology Spring Symposium for my presentation on soil-based urban ecosystem services! Thankful for great feedback from the faculty judges.
March 2017: So excited to announce that I'm the recipient of a P.E.O. Scholar Award! Thankful for this extra support as I work towards finishing up my dissertation next year.
Jan 2017: Listen to me discuss my dissertation research on urban ecology and ecosystem services on WORT community radio!
Nov 2016: My urban heat island research was featured in recent article about weather bikes in The Environmental Monitor
Oct 2016: I was recently interviewed by the Isthmus about the Turner Lab's work on invasive Asian Jumping Worms. Check out the article: "Worming their way into Wisconsin"
Aug 2016: Another presentation of my work on urban soil ecosystem services at the annual Ecological Society of America meeting in Fort Lauderdale. Two conferences makes for a busy summer, but excited for great feedback and new ideas.
July 2016: Presented my ongoing research on urban soil ecosystem services at the annual Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution meeting in beautiful St. John's, NL. Had a wonderful time reconnecting with my Canadian ecology community!
May 2016: I'm officially a PhD Candidate! Thankful to a great committee for pushing me (but mostly thankful to have my prelim exams over!).
March 2016: I've been awarded a Garden Club of America "Urban Forest Fellowship" to explore the role of urban forests in mitigating the urban heat island in Madison this summer. Excited to get started! Check it out.
Jan 2016: I've been awarded a National Geographic "Young Explorer" Award to set up a field experiment testing how interactions between invasive species may effect ecosystem services here in Wisconsin! Excited to work with Nat Geo, the WSC project, and UW-Madison Arboretum on this project.
Jan 2016: Lots of thesis progress happening. C/N results are in, and prelim exams are scheduled for April! Excited to get back to work this semester.
Nov 2015: Analysis milestone - 1200 soil samples prepped for C/N and P analysis! Huge thanks to my awesome tech Lauren for helping get this done so quickly.
Oct 2015: Our Monteregie Connection paper (Linking landscapes, biodiversity, and ecosystem services to improve decision making) is now online at Ecology and Society. Huge thanks to awesome colleague (mentor, friend) Matt Mitchell for shepherding us through the process!
Sept 2015: Accepted! The first paper from my PhD work, on the biodiversity-ecosystem service relationship in urban areas is now out in Oikos.
Sept 2015: Just came home from the LTER all science meeting in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado. Lots of fun science and great networking.
Aug 2015: Just wrapped up my first PhD field season! We sampled for soils in 100 urban ecology sites, including lawns, prairies, forests, and parks!
July 2015: Field season is in full swing! Really enjoying interacting with so many Madison residents, and spreading the word about the importance of ecosystem services and sustainable cities.
June 2015: Taking a break from field season planning to attend #ComSciCon in Boston this week! Excited to learn more about effective science communication and meet new colleagues.
May 2015: Classes are out for the semester! Can't wait to start research with UW-Madison's Water Sustainability and Climate team this summer.
May 2015: I passed my PhD Qualifying Exams! One step closer to dissertator status.
April 2015: I've been elected president of the Zoology Graduate Student Organization here at UW-Madison! Looking forward to kicking off a great Grad Student Informal Seminar (GSIS) series in the fall!
April 2015: I was selected as one of 50 STEM grad students to attend this year's National ComSciCon in Boston. Can't wait!
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