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With its moist and moderate climate, the Pacific Northwest provides an ideal home for a rich variety of land snails and slugs. More than 150 species of terrestrial gastropod – including both native and introduced species – inhabit this region, providing important ecosystem services throughout our forests, wetlands, parklands, and mountains. Many of these are small […]

In BC, mushrooms are most typically associated with the autumn, but springtime can bring its own fungal surprises. There are fewer mushrooms around in spring days--inventories of mushrooms in this season report about a third as many species as autumn inventories. Still, spring-fruiting mushrooms can be just as exciting (and challenging) as the ones that come […]

Right outside our door lies a secret world. Thousands of tiny creatures living out complex lives that go largely unseen by human eyes. But if you know where to look, and how, you’d be shocked at the complex dramas that are unfolding in our very backyards, this very minute. Today we’re going to take a […]

Hagfishes are bottom dwelling marine animals that are capable of producing startling amounts of defensive slime when they are provoked. We have investigated the composition and mechanical properties of the slime using a variety of techniques. We have also demonstrated that hagfish slime is especially good at clogging the gills of would-be fish predators, which […]

Related to dull-colored, garden-munching land slugs, “naked gilled” sea slugs (nudibranchs) are some of the most colorful and charismatic inhabitants of the marine world. They come in all different shapes and sizes – as small as a grain of rice or as large as a loaf of bread - yet these animals have no commercial […]

Introducing two unique gelatinous zooplankton and their roles in the ocean. Salps and pyrosomes are zooplankton – free floating animals that drift with the ocean currents. They are unique because they have gelatinous bodies, similar to cnidarian jellies, but unlike jellyfish they don’t have stingers and primarily consume phytoplankton. They are part of a group […]