What makes a biology professor tick? Each week in ‘Nerd Corner’ we’ll attempt to find out!

Introducing Dr. Brian Starzomski, winner of the prestigious Ian McTaggart-Cowan Professorship of Biodiversity, Conservation, and Ecological Restoration at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

CB: Describe your research interests in a nutshell.

BS: I study biodiversity- why there are so many species, why some places have more species than others, and how changes in the environment impact the number of species we see there.  Biodiversity is a great thing to study because it means you can work with all kinds of different parts of nature: from plants to insects to birds to fish, and everything in between.

CB: Where was the last place you travelled to for work and why did you go there?

BS: I recently attended a scientific meeting in Russia, where we discussed ways to determine how fast and far treeline is moving because of climate change.  It turns out that one way to answer this question might be to use declassified data from old spy satellites!

CB: Where do you do most of your field work?

BS: The fieldwork I do has most recently taken place in the Mealy Mountains of Labrador, a beautiful area that was just named Canada’s newest national park.  This is a rugged landscape of mountains, rock, lakes and rivers, with forests in the lowlands and tundra in the highlands.  It is the buggiest, most bear-filled place I have ever been.  It is also one of the most spectacularly beautiful.  All access is by helicopter and float plane, so it is very remote and the only other people I see all summer are other scientists and pilots.

CB: Yes, I figured it was buggy when I looked at the guy wearing the bug-suit during your soccer game! Black flies and mosquitoes, gotta love ‘em!

CB: What’s a typical field-work day like for you?

BS: I work with a number of scientists and we are based in a field camp of a dozen tents, use a snow bank for refrigerating our food, and get water and bathe from a gurgling stream.  Sometimes a caribou wanders by when we are visiting the outhouse. 

A typical day involves getting up at 4:00 am and drinking a big cup of coffee, then going and mapping where different types of birds are in the landscape.  My partner and I usually walk about 10 km over mountains, around bogs, and through a nearly impenetrable mess of stunted trees called krummholtz before returning to our field camp at 10:00 am. Then I drink another big cup of coffee and head out to spend the rest of the day measuring trees, until about 5:00 pm.  Dinner takes place in a great big tent called a Weatherhaven (big enough for 12 people), where we gather to enter our data and talk about the plants and animals we saw that day.  

CB: Sounds incredible!  I cannot imagine that any 2 days are ever the same.  What do you make for dinner?  What about things like taking showers?

BS: Our ‘shower’ was a pool of water in a stream at the foot of a melting snow cave.  As you can imagine, it was very cold!  Also, the blackflies and mosquitoes were so bad that within minutes of being out of the water, you would be covered head to toe in bites.  Taking a bath was always, in my opinion, a miserable experience!

Our camp was meat-free, due to the bear threat in the valley.  As a result, the fare was vegetarian all summer. We made a lot of pasta, a lot of rice and vegetables (the veggies would be buried in barrels for refrigeration in the snow bank that persisted almost all summer).

CB: Any advice to budding biologists?

BS: Have fun with what you do!  I grew up in a small town in Nova Scotia, and spent a lot of time in the woods, watching birds and fishing.  The most important thing was the encouragement my parents gave me through sending me out into the woods and taking me camping every summer.  Take advantage of the opportunities you have to learn about nature.

CB: Do you have any special non-biological talents?

BS: I’m a pretty good cook, and I’ve got a wicked forehand in Ultimate Frisbee.  My wife says I am a good bike mechanic.  I once survived a helicopter crash while doing fieldwork on Ellesmere Island in the Arctic, so I am apparently very lucky.

CB: Wow.  I’m guessing you weren’t too interested in doing field work after that!

CB: At the end of these gruelling field seasons, you must have some guilty pleasures to indulge in…

BS: I like nice bikes and I have a huge library.  I love coffee, hamburgers, and lobsters.

CB: If you could have 3 guests for dinner…alive or dead, who would they be?

BS:This is an interesting question.  I’ve been really fortunate to have dinner with many of the scientists I would like to chat with- people like Wade Davis, Buzz Holling, and even a couple of Nobel Prize winners.  An intriguing dinner group, off the top of my head, would be the following writers: Jim Harrison (who writes some wonderfully big food pieces), the anthropologist Richard Nelson, and Annie Dillard. It just seems like a group where the conversation would range widely.

CB: What would you eat?

BS: Wild and local foods from here on southern Vancouver Island. 

CB: And don’t forget the wine!

CB:Any special Dr. Bondar memories you’d like to share?

BS:Dr. Bondar first introduced me to crayfish, which we didn’t have where I grew up in Nova Scotia.  She made them cute!

CB:Awwww, thanks Brian!