91亚色 Professors Natasha Myers and Thilo Womelsdorf have been awarded $100,000 each in funding under the Ontario government鈥檚 Early Researcher Awards program. 聽

Ontario鈥檚 Ministry of Economic Development聽& Innovation announced the awards Monday. 聽91亚色鈥檚 research investment of $50,000 will match the funds for the award.

The program helps promising, recently appointed Ontario researchers build research teams of undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research associates and technicians. The goal of the program is to improve Ontario鈥檚 ability to attract and retain the best and brightest research talent. Ontario鈥檚 Early Researcher Awards investment of $8.68 million will support 62 emerging researchers and their teams at 19 institutions across the province.

Professor , of the Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science聽& Engineering and member of 91亚色鈥檚 Centre for Vision Research, is studying how individuals focus their attention on one object, thought or event, while ignoring other external information. 聽His research examines the three major regions of the brain that guide and determine selective attention, to find out how they work and interact.聽聽Womelsdorf鈥檚 research will identify how networks of brain cells coordinate separable attention information using state-of-the-art technologies and will critically advance hotly-debated, neuro-economic decision making theories.聽The research will lead to a better understanding of various diseases that widely affect health, education and the economy of Ontario.

Professor Natasha Myers, of the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, examines how plants are acquiring new status and visibility in our culture. Specifically, she explores the ways that artists and scientists are transforming our everyday assumptions through artworks and experiments that render plants as active, sensing organisms. This ethnographic research with practitioners both in Ontario and at international sites will shed light on the ethical and political significance of these shifts in perception about nonhuman life and the order of things.

鈥淚 am most pleased that the Ministry of Research and Economic Development has recognized the achievements of 91亚色 Professors Natasha Myers and Thilo Womelsdorf, who are actively engaged in conducting globally competitive research in the early stages of their careers,鈥� said Robert Hach茅, 91亚色鈥檚 vice-president research & innovation. 鈥淥ur early career researchers represent the future of research at 91亚色 and contribute to building Canada鈥檚 knowledge-based economy. 聽The funding provided by the Ministry will provide these emerging researchers with resources to build their innovative research programs.鈥� 聽

鈥淭his research work is important to helping us meet our health care challenges while fostering long-term job creation and economic growth,鈥� said Brad Duguid, minister of economic development and innovation.

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The study, led by Rutgers University, finds that bees are emerging earlier each spring, advancing their life cycle by nearly a day per decade.

"This may become a case of 鈥榤issed connections鈥� in terms of bees and the plants they need to pollinate," says Sheila Colla (right), a 91亚色 PhD聽candidate in biology and study co-author. "So far, bees and plants are keeping pace with each other, but this may not be the case as rates of temperature warming increase."

Scientists call this phenomenon a "phenological mismatch" 鈥� when the life cycles of dependent species fall out of sync with one another.

"In the case of bees, [this mismatch] hasn鈥檛 happened yet," Colla says. "The concern is that some plant species will not respond to climate change in the same manner as their pollinators."聽

The study looked at the past 130 years of data on聽10 species of wild bees that emerge in the early spring in eastern North America, comparing it with published studies of bee pollinated plants over the same time period.

Results show that life cycle changes in bees have paralleled changes in the plants they visit. Both bees and plants responded to temperature increases from 1971-1999 by more than doubling their rates of phenological advance, suggesting a parallel response to climate change.

"So far, there is only a small difference between bees and plants in terms of their response to climate change, noted in only a handful of species. But, this small difference is worrying," Colla says, noting that of聽particular concern is the finding that plant studies conducted in cities showed greater rates of advance for species that emerge earlier in the season.

"This suggests more investigation into the effects of temperature warming in urban environments is needed," says Colla. She emphasizes that potential problems aren鈥檛 just limited to pollination.

"Many ecological functions result from interactions among species, and because not all species respond to climate warming in the same manner, this could potentially lead to phenological mismatches that result in the loss of function. In other words, this could result in serious challenges for many different forms of animal and plant life."

Colla conducted her research under the supervision of 91亚色 biology Professor Laurence Packer as a PhD student in the Department of Biology in聽the聽Faculty of Science & Engineering.聽The research was funded through a Natural Sciences聽& Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship to Colla.

The study, "Climate-associated phenological advances in bee pollinators and bee-pollinated plants," was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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The talk, 鈥淥rangutans: Research & Rainforest Protection in Borneo鈥�, will take place Nov. 10, from noon to 1:30pm, at 305 91亚色 Lanes, Keele campus. There will also be a panel discussion with representatives of BOS Canada. Light refreshments will be served.

The event is designed to help spread the message about the work Russon is doing in Kutai National Park, about the work of聽BOS Canada and about the many potential opportunities for research available in this incredibly unique and threatened wilderness.

Russon specializes in research on wild orangutan intelligence and has recently taken over Camp Kriu in Kutai National Park in Indonesian Borneo, where she studies a large population of wild orangutans. Her work is represented in Canada as part of BOS Canada.

In 2002, Borneo suffered massive fires. Kutai National Park was heavily damaged and聽was thought to be a write-off by many conservation biologists. As Russon will discuss during her talk, this was anything but the case. Secondary growth in the forest of Kutai has taken off, providing an incredibly rich habitat for wildlife with faster growing plants and more available fruit than in a primary forest setting.

Left: Anne Russon

Consequently, a healthy wild orangutan population is now thriving there. The park, however, is not unthreatened. Across the narrow Sangata River that divides Kutai from private land, there is a coal mine large enough to be seen from space. Like the rest of Borneo, the park risks being re-zoned for timber, mining or palm oil, should its value as a nature reserve come into dispute.

It is important to note that this region of Indonesia represents the second most biologically diverse area of the world after the Amazon. It is quickly being swallowed by the oil, timber and mining industries with little regard for the indigenous peoples who live on the land.

Russon鈥檚 profile in the park, as someone living and working there, helps to keep it protected. To continue building the profile of her project and expanding the research activities at Camp Kriu, Russon is welcoming interested students and researchers to join her.

For more information, visit the .

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