Page 7 - EUREKA Winter 2017

The butterfly effect they live in patches of forest that are linked together by
hedgerows than if they live in a habitat isolated by farm
fields or urban development.
Scientific leaps forward are rarely a straightforward Fahrig, whose work combines simulation modelling and
process. “When you’re doing a project, you think it’s about field study, shifted to butterflies while doing a PhD at the
something, and then you see something unexpected University of Toronto. “The butterflies I studied didn’t use
and the research changes habitat corridors,” she says. “I realized I couldn’t take one
direction,” says Carleton biologist type of population model and slap it onto everything.”
Lenore Fahrig, who studies the While doing a postdoc in Virginia, Fahrig switched
effects of landscape structure species again and started looking at coastal dune plants.
on biodiversity and wildlife Afterwards, she worked in Newfoundland for two years as a
populations. “You have to be research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, doing
open-minded and be able to step population modelling on cod and redfish before joining
back and notice things that you Merriam in Carleton’s biology department. “You don’t
might not otherwise see.” necessarily want to become an expert on one particular
Fahrig, who was inducted into taxonomic group of organisms,” she says. “It’s good to be
the Royal Society of Canada in aware of a range of populations, and of different ways of
November, is credited, alongside viewing spatial landscape patterns.”
Carleton emeritus professor Gray Fahrig’s lab, which usually includes 10 or so graduate
Merriam, with introducing the students and a postdoc or two, has evolved over the years,
Chris Roussakis concept of habitat connectivity. developing expertise in the effects of human activities such as
road networks and farmland patterning on wildlife populations,
She first came to Carleton in 1981
Lenore Fahrig, FRSC. to do a master’s degree with as well as mitigation measures to limit negative impacts on
Merriam, Canada’s preeminent species. But some things have remained constant, including
landscape ecologist and one of the founders of the field. weekly lab discussions, open to the community, that Merriam
They used the term “habitat connectivity” in a co-authored had started decades earlier. “It’s good for graduate students to
paper published in 1985, part of her research that concluded be interacting with different types of people,” says Fahrig, “so
mice populations have a better chance of surviving if we don’t get lost in our own specific projects.”

Dinosaur discovery

An international group of researchers led by Bradley McFeeters, a PhD student in
Carleton’s Department of Earth Sciences, has confirmed the discovery of a new
ostrich-like dinosaur. Rativates evadens lived during the Late Cretaceous period in
what are now the badlands adjacent to Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park.
“Rativates was previously identified as another specimen of the more common
ostrich dinosaur, Struthiomimus altus, but it lacks the characteristics of that
species,” says McFeeters. “We can tell that it is a new species based on features
of its skull, tail, pelvis and feet.”
Based on a partial skeleton collected by Royal Ontario Museum paleontologists
more than 80 years ago, researchers believe that Rativates (rat-ai-vey-tiz) would
have resembled a contemporary ostrich, but with long, fingered arms instead
of wings, and a long tail. It would have been roughly 3.3 metres long, about 1.5
metres tall and weighed about 60 kilograms. Rativates means “bird foreteller”
and alludes to the paradox of an ostrich mimic creature that existed before
ostriches. The name evadens means to evade, in reference to this swift-footed
dinosaur’s ability to escape predators. Their long, powerful legs would have
made them fast runners, whether they were hunting prey or escaping from larger
predators. Although related to carnivorous dinosaurs, Rativates lacked teeth and,
similar to birds, had beaked mouths. They are believed to have been omnivorous,
meaning they ate plants, insects and other small animals.
“Rativates is another exciting example of a new species of dinosaur being
discovered among museum collections,” says Michael Ryan, a Carleton adjunct
professor and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of
Natural History, who co-authored the paper describing the new species with
McFeeters and two other contributors. “These valuable collections allow modern Ian Morrison
researchers to build on the work of earlier scientists to advance what we know
about the ancient Earth and provide new insights into evolution.” PhD student Bradley McFeeters probes the past.

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