My application for a 2019 Northern Research Fund (NRF) award has been successful! It is my first project as a principal investigator and I, along with a PhD student, will be sampling aquatic habitats in subarctic Canada.

I will use DNA barcoding to identify midges, a method that uses a small fragment of an organism’s DNA to delineate species. This assessment will provide a basis for future monitoring of population shifts but it will also by means of comparison with earlier data allow a first peak into the effects of a changing climate within a decade. In addition, this work will greatly improve the understanding of an important component of aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity and distribution in a sub-arctic ecosystem.