Ty Burke

U of T researchers help vulnerable populations in Southeast Asia tackle climate change

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 20:24:56 +0000

U of T researchers help vulnerable populations in Southeast Asia tackle climate change

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 09/23/2022 - 16:24

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A resident wades through a flooded alley as water overflows from the Chao Phraya river in Pathum Thani province, Thailand in 2021 (photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Ty Burke

Topic

Our Community

Climate Change

Global

Southeast Asia

Sustainability

U of T Mississauga

More than one billion people live in informal settlements in urban areas in the Global South – and they are among those who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

“These are what people often call slums. They are vast areas of cities, which are usually self-built and self-managed, and where people have no formal right to live,” says Amrita Daniere, a professor of geography, geomatics and the environment at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga.

Amrita Daniere

“People who live in these settlements have little access to services like sanitation, water and transportation. They are often considered illegal and residents are subject to eviction or having their homes destroyed. Their lives are precarious and this makes people especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”

Nature-based infrastructure solutions could help make these areas less vulnerable to extreme heat and unpredictable flooding – but only if they are adopted. The Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia project (UCRSEA) examined what needs to occur for these approaches to be implemented. The five-year, multi-disciplinary international research collaboration, funded by both the International Development Research Centre and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, brought together scholars from U of T’s Asian Institute, the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and the Thailand Environmental Institute.

“Green infrastructure solutions emphasize using nature, so we don’t have to rely on conventional technologies like concrete, dikes and dams to do the work of holding back flood waters or mitigating against extensive heat,” says Daniere.

There are many actions cities can take to mitigate and adapt to climate change, even in slums, but, according to Daniere, researchers found that people aren’t always aware of what can be done.

“There is not a lot of connection between the people who understand these issues and those who make decisions. That isn't an enormous insight, but our project was the first time that some scholars engaged directly with politicians and decision-makers.”

The climate resilience project looked at medium-sized cities across Southeast Asia. These cities typically receive direction from central governments, which are based in larger centres like Bangkok, Thailand and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

“They get ideas and funding from the national government, and most of them are pretty conventional,” says Daniere. “You build a dam and have flood pumping equipment. They don't necessarily explore building green roofs or roads with porous pavement that are lined with trees and bushes. Up until this point, development in Southeast Asia has been quite Western-oriented in terms of what a modern city should look like.”

Santichon Songkroh, a small community along Bangkok Noi Canal in Thailand, faced daily flooding caused by leaking water barricades and heavy rainfall from Tropical Storm Kompasu (photo by Phobthum Yingpaiboonsuk/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

One of the project’s main goals was to help create knowledge and provide vulnerable people with the space to learn about and share in decisions that could protect them from the economic, social and physical impacts of climate change. To make these voices heard, researchers used Theory of Change, which asks how and why change can be achieved in a given context.

“We wanted to convince policy-makers to consult with local communities and work together to design adaptation projects that prioritize their needs, rather than making top-down decisions. But for this to happen, we need to know who to reach and with what kinds of information,” says Daniere.

"First, we need to learn who makes a decision and who they listen to. Where do they get information? And if we need to change their mind, then how do we get them the information they need to change? And once we’d done that, we came up with opportunities to invite decision-makers to interact with scholars conducting research with the communities – to put them together, so they can talk and learn and hear each other’s perspectives.”

Large annual workshops and smaller individual meetings were held throughout the project and, at its conclusion, decision-makers from across Southeast Asia gathered in Bangkok for an event where they discussed results and tried to produce straightforward communications products about the project’s findings. This was fundamental to getting people to participate authentically.

“Policy-makers made it clear to us that they weren’t interested in journal articles and research reports. They really need to have information that can be easily communicated,” says Daniere.

“Researchers need to understand how research is received. I always knew this was important – and there can be a sense that ideas are not implemented, even if they are really great. A lot of my own attention has been focused on being a conscientious scholar, working with communities and trying to prioritize their vision, voice and needs. This was the first time I realized that I don’t need to publish more papers.

“We focused on how to convince people to change and admitted to ourselves that if nobody pays attention to the research, then climate change is going to kill many people in these countries. I don't say that lightly, but it's true.”

'Happy spouse, happy house?’ Study finds men and women equally strong predictors of relationship satisfaction

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 13:16:45 +0000

'Happy spouse, happy house?’ Study finds men and women equally strong predictors of relationship satisfaction

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 08/18/2022 - 09:16

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(photo by AsiaVision./Getty Images)

Ty Burke

Topic

Breaking Research

U of T Mississauga

Researchers have found that men and women are both equally strong predictors of future relationship satisfaction in mixed-gender relationships – suggesting the phrase “Happy spouse, happy house” is not only a more inclusive maxim than the old saw about wives and lives, but far more accurate.

“People experience ups and downs in their romantic relationships,” says Emily Impett, a professor in the department of psychology at U of T Mississauga. “Some days are better than others, and it is widely believed that women's relationship perceptions will carry more weight in predicting future relationship satisfaction.

Emily Impett (photo by Darya Morreale)

“This idea that women are the barometers of relationships is captured in expressions like ‘happy wife, happy life.’”

Yet, there are few studies that have examined this assumption, and those that did had small sample sizes. So, Impett and the University of Alberta’s Matthew Johnson, as well as other researchers, tested the old adage through analysis of data from nine studies from Canada, the United States and Germany. The studies included relationship satisfaction reports provided by 901 mixed-gender couples who kept a daily diary for up to 21 days, and a yearly relationship satisfaction survey provided by 3,405 couples over a five-year period. In all, the research considered more than 50,000 relationship satisfaction reports.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The relationship satisfaction of both men and women were equally strong predictors of their own future satisfaction and of their partner’s – whether it was day-to-day, or year-to-year,” says Impett. “Men’s satisfaction matters equally, in terms of how they feel, and how their partner feels about the relationship in the future.

“Just think about what happens in the daily lives of couples. When one partner is having a particularly bad day, that lingers in the relationship. On the flip side of that, when one partner is feeling particularly good about the relationship, both partners reap the benefits of that. We see the same pattern over longer periods of time too, from one year to the next. Relationship satisfaction forecasts future satisfaction.”

The research calls into questions several existing theoretical perspectives.

“Evolutionary perspectives might suggest that women have evolved psychological mechanisms that make them especially attuned to the quality of their relationships – to help them select an optimal mate,” Impett explains. “And there is also a social-psychological perspective. The social performance of gender roles requires women to attend to the needs of their partners and take responsibility for maintaining relationships. So, their views about the relationship would be more likely to affect couple dynamics. But that is not what we found at all. We found that both men and women have equal power to shape the future of their relationship.”

The researchers’ findings underscore the importance of being aware of satisfaction in relationships and taking the necessary steps to cultivate it.

“Many couples wait too long to seek help for issues in their relationships, but people know when they are experiencing more negativity than positivity, and they have the potential to try to shift things,” says Impett.

“We already know the things that couples can do to maintain relationship satisfaction: be responsive to a partner's needs, support them when they are down, share in their good news and cultivate gratitude.

“It is important for people to be aware of their own satisfaction and its fluctuations. Knowing how you can impact your own relationship satisfaction matters for you, and it matters for your partner, too.”

The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

With Helsinki as his first stop, ��߲ݴ�ý grad charts a career path in sustainability

geoff.vendeville — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 15:50:05 +0000

With Helsinki as his first stop, ��߲ݴ�ý grad charts a career path in sustainability

geoff.vendeville Mon, 06/13/2022 - 11:50

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Andi Darell Alhakim, a Pearson Scholar from Indonesia, credits extracurricular activities, including an internship with the President's Committee on Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability, for helping him find his purpose (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship

Sustainability

U of T Mississauga

Andi Darell Alhakim came a long way to study at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga, travelling from his home in Indonesia. Soon, he'll be headed in another direction: to the capital of Finland to help the Helsinki Regional Council showcase the progress it's made toward achieving sustainable development goals.

“They have done a lot, and want to demonstrate that to an international audience. I’m excited to be a part of that,” Alhakim says .

The bachelor of arts student in political science came to U of T in 2018 as a Lester B. Pearson Scholar, the university's most competitive scholarship for outstanding international students. When he arrived, he aspired to make a positive difference in the world and perhaps one day become Indonesia's ambassador to the UN. But he had yet to discover his true calling.

For Alhakim, co-curricular activities were the key to learning more about his interests and finding his purpose. “Clubs, committees, organizations really set the tone for university life,” he says. “You make good friends from it, and it's nice to have people on the same journey as you.”

One of those organizations is the International Education Centre (IEC), where Alhakim worked for two years.

“It was so exciting to make sure that students get to express their cultural affiliations, and at the same time bridge divides between cultures,” he says.

“People from many backgrounds participate in these programs, and the IEC really trusted students to run their programming. We facilitated discussions about food, dances, and different customs. These are important to building and starting conversations. As an international student, I really appreciated how U of T did not expect me to fit a pre-existing mould. There was a lot of emphasis on chasing your own path, and I was not really sure what that would be when I arrived.”

He also got involved with Hart House Debate and Dialogue, and was able to align that involvement with a burgeoning interest in sustainability. For the past two years, he’s been a researcher and intern for the President's Committee on Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability.

Like other students, Alhakim had to cope with the challenges associated with the move to remote learning during the pandemic. But for him, there was an extra layer of difficulty. He went back to Indonesia in the early days of the pandemic so he had to keep nocturnal hours to attend class.

“The folks in the GTA were very understanding of the 12-hour time difference, and the organizations I participated in often scheduled evening meetings so I could participate. That was very nice, but the hours were grueling – I was working from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m.,” he says.

“By the end of one semester, I decided I needed to return, so I could have a healthier schedule.”

He credits his time at U of T for paving the way for a career in sustainability after convocation. Already, he had lined up a job for after his summer in Finland as the sustainability lead at the Canada Summer Games in Niagara region. Organizers are looking to minimize greenhouse gas emissions related to venue construction, and to use the Games as an opportunity to spread awareness about social and economic sustainability.

“It was daunting to come to an institution with a reputation like U of T’s,” he recalls. “You think everyone else has everything figured out – but that's not the case. Everyone is trying to find what they are most passionate about. You need to take the time to explore.”

Urbanization is driving the evolution of plants around the world, U of T study finds

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 19:18:45 +0000

Urbanization is driving the evolution of plants around the world, U of T study finds

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 03/17/2022 - 15:18

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A study led by U of T researchers had scientists from around the world examine white clover since it's present in almost every city on Earth and provides a tool to understand how urban environments influence evolution (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Humans are constantly re-shaping the environment by building sprawling cities, but a new study demonstrates that urban environments are also altering the way life itself evolves – and it’s happening all around the world.

Researchers, led by evolutionary biologists at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga, analyzed data about the white clover plant that was collected by 287 scientists in 160 cities across 26 countries, from Toronto and Tokyo to Melbourne and Munich. They found the clearest evidence yet that humans in general, and cities specifically, are a dominant force driving the evolution of life globally – with white clover frequently evolving in direct response to environmental changes taking place in urban settings.

The results of the Global Urban Evolution Project (GLUE) were published this week in the journal Science.

“We’ve long known that we’ve changed cities in pretty profound ways and we’ve dramatically altered the environment and ecosystems,” says study co-lead James Santangelo, a PhD student in biology at U of T Mississauga. “But we just showed [the reverse] happens, often in similar ways, on a global scale.”

The GLUE study illustrates that the environmental conditions in cities tend to be more similar to each other than to nearby rural habitats. In that sense, downtown Toronto is more comparable to downtown Tokyo than it is to surrounding farmland and forests outside of the city.

Not only were researchers able to observe global adaptation to cities, they identified the genetic basis of that adaptation and the environmental drivers of evolution. White clover produces hydrogen cyanide as both a defense mechanism against herbivores and to increase its tolerance to water stress, and GLUE found that clover growing in cities typically produce less of it than clover in neighbouring rural areas due to repeated adaptation to urban environments.

The changes in the presence of herbivores and water stress in cities are pushing white clover to adapt differently than their rural counterparts – a finding that holds true for cities across various climates and which holds implications that reach far beyond the humble clover plant.

James Santangelo, a PhD student in biology at U of T Mississauga, co-led the study, which analyzed data about the white clover plant that was collected by 287 scientists in 160 cities across 26 countries (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

“This study is a model to understand how humans change the evolution of life around us,” says Rob Ness, an assistant professor of biology at U of T Mississauga who co-led the project with Santangelo and Professor Marc Johnson. “Cities are where people live and this is the most compelling evidence we have that we are altering the evolution of life in them.

“Beyond ecologists and evolutionary biologists, this is going to be important for society.”

GLUE examined white clover because it is one of the few organisms present in almost every city on Earth, providing a tool to understand how urban environments influence evolution.

Johnson says now that we know humans are driving evolution in cities across the planet, the information can be used to start developing strategies to better conserve rare species and allow them to adapt to urban environments. It can also help us better understand how to prevent unwanted pests and diseases from adapting to human environments, he says.

For GLUE, this study is just the beginning. Using the same techniques, collaborators collected more than 110,000 clover samples from 160 cities and nearby rural areas and have sequenced more than 2,500 clover genomes, creating a massive dataset that will be studied for years to come.

The unprecedented global collaboration began with a single tweet.

“Nearly everyone we asked to collaborate said yes – and that was kind of remarkable, because we were asking people to take on a lot of work,” says Johnson, who co-ordinated the more than 280 other researchers who participated in the study. “Our collaborators recognized the importance of this project. There has never been a field study of evolution of this scale, or a global study of how urbanization influences evolution.

"It would have been impossible to do this without our global set of collaborators.”

Johnson calls the project a model for inclusive science since team was equally split between women and men, and included not just established researchers, but also students at all levels and from all inhabited continents around the world.

Simple vehicle warning systems as effective as more complex ones: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 20:38:38 +0000

Simple vehicle warning systems as effective as more complex ones: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/18/2022 - 15:38

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Researchers found that simple warnings provide the same reaction time in drivers as more complicated systems, which are more vulnerable to errors (photo by Per Loov via Unsplash)

Ty Burke

Topic

Breaking Research

Psychology

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

There are over 10,000 collisions between vehicles and wildlife in Ontario every year. Most are not fatal for those in the vehicle, but the costs associated with such a collision in Canada total about $800 million annually.

While automotive safety systems already warn drivers of some hazards – such as a vehicle in their blind spot – identifying unexpected hazards, including potential collisions with wildlife, in dynamic road situations is a more complicated task.

Now, cognitive psychologists from the ��߲ݴ�ý have found that simple safety alerts may work just as well as complicated systems, which are more vulnerable to errors, when it comes to alerting drivers of impending wildlife collisions.

In a recent publication in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, Anna Kosovicheva and Benjamin Wolfe – co-directors of the Applied Perception and Psychophysics Laboratory (APPLY) at U of T Mississauga – examined ways to make vehicle safety alerts more effective. To conduct their analysis, the researchers used dashcam footage of actual driving situations they obtained from YouTube. Using methods that draw upon fundamental cognitive psychology research, they tested three different types of attentional cues that warned research participant, or driver, of a looming hazard, and evaluated how each one affected their response time.

One warning drew a driver’s attention directly to the hazard. Called a spatiotemporal valid cue, this accurately superimposed a graphic of expanding red rings around the hazard itself – as though the safety system had identified the hazard in the correct place at the correct time. This worked. Driver response time was about 60 milliseconds faster.

“If you are not a vision scientist used to thinking in milliseconds, that might not sound like a lot,” says Wolfe, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at U of T Mississauga. “But if you are driving on the highway, it could be two or three metres. That is not enough to brake fully, but could be enough to swerve and avoid a collision.”

But when a hazard was inaccurately identified, it had the opposite effect. Drivers were also given a type of warning called a spatiotemporal invalid cue. This inaccurately superimposed the set of expanding red rings around some other object in the scene. That drew the driver’s attention away from the hazard and slowed response time by about 60 milliseconds.

“This is fairly disconcerting, from a road safety standpoint. No automated vehicle systems will ever be perfect,” says Wolfe. “The engineers building them will get it right most of the time, but sometimes systems will fail.”

Kosovicheva and Wolfe also tested a third type of cue that is simpler to execute, from an engineering standpoint. Called a temporal valid cue, drivers were warned of the presence of a hazard by a red bar at the bottom of the screen. This cue came at the right time but it did not identify where the hazard was located. Still, it had a roughly equivalent effect to the cue that had accurately pointed to it. Response times were improved by about 60 milliseconds.

“This suggests that while complicated engineering solutions can be effective, simple alerts can be effective too,” says Kosovicheva, who is also an assistant professor of psychology at U of T Mississauga. “Just having the information in time can be helpful, and if you are going to have a spatial component to a safety alert, the information about where a hazard is needs to be really accurate.”

Hybrid species like the ‘coywolf’ could hold clues about human evolutionary history

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 18:04:12 +0000

Hybrid species like the ‘coywolf’ could hold clues about human evolutionary history

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 11/26/2021 - 13:04

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An eastern coyote – a hybrid of coyote, wolf and dog – is seen on the prowl in Kawartha Lakes, Ont. (photo by Alan Emery via Unsplash)

Ty Burke

Topic

Our Community

Graduate Students

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

The offspring of two horses will be a horse, and the offspring of two donkeys will be a donkey. But the offspring of a horse and a donkey will be a mule. And most mules are infertile, so mules are not a species.

For decades, this was the basic logic used to define a biological species: a population of animals that can successfully reproduce. But that definition is shifting. There are hybrid animals that produce fertile offspring and grow into larger populations, but are not necessarily their own species.

Coyote/wolf hybrids are among them. These canine hybrids live across a large swath of northeastern North America, and they have DNA from coyotes, wolves and even domestic dogs. Media coverage has sometimes sensationalized the risk associated with “coywolves” in urban and suburban neighbourhoods, but these animals are not new. Coyote/wolf hybrids were first identified in the early 20th century, and they can successfully reproduce over generations.

So why would they be considered a canine hybrid and not a separate species?

“There is not one ‘coywolf,’ there are various pockets of hybrids of coyotes and wolves in different parts of the continent,” explains Lauren Schroeder, an assistant professor of paleoanthropology at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga.

In an article published in the Journal of Morphology, students and collaborators of the Schroeder Lab identified several traits in coyote/wolf hybrids that are also found in other mammal hybrids. The research team on the project included recent U of T Mississauga master’s of anthropology graduate Natasa Zdjelar, current PhD students Lavania Nagendran and Christopher Kendall, and Rebecca Rogers Ackermann of the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

They examined more than 400 eastern coyote skulls held in the collection of the State Museum of New York in Albany. Many of these animals had extra teeth and dental crowding. They also had significant anomalies in the sutures of their skull – the shallow grooves in the cranial bones that are flexible at a mammal’s time of birth to facilitate delivery, but fuse as it matures.

“These traits are caused mostly by the mismatch in size between the two species – a wolf is a lot larger than a coyote,” says Schroeder.

But factors such as genetic mutations could also cause some traits observed in hybrid animals, and Schroeder’s research program is part of a wider effort to identify the signatures of hybrid animals across different species.

“We wanted to know whether the eastern coyote exhibits similar anomalies that are found in other mammalian hybrids, such as baboons, wildebeests, and mice,” says Schroeder.

A deeper understanding of the traits that are associated with species hybridization would enrich our understanding of the fossil record and could have significant implications for how paleoanthropologists interpret human evolutionary history.

“Hybridization happened in humans as well, but we do not really know the extent to which it happened in the very distant past, or if it was something that only occurred more recently,” says Schroeder.

“With coyotes and wolves, you have multiple species that are reproducing and producing viable offspring. They are succeeding in North America. In the human model, you also have multiple species on the landscape. Different groups of hominins, like Neanderthals, humans and Denisovans did reproduce, hybridize and were successful,” she says. “It is a more complex concept of what makes a biological species. Different populations reproducing together, and producing hybrid offspring. Some are viable and succeed, while others do not.”

U of T Mississauga researcher uncovers evidence of earliest known dairy production in India

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 19:02:27 +0000

U of T Mississauga researcher uncovers evidence of earliest known dairy production in India

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 10/19/2020 - 15:02

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U of T Mississauga's Kalyan Sekhar Chakraborty found that dairy was being produced as far back as 2500 BCE by using molecular analysis techniques to study residues from ancient pottery (photo by Amit Basu Photography)

Ty Burke

Topic

Breaking Research

Anthropology

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

In the fertile river valley along the border of modern-day India and Pakistan, the Indus Valley Civilization built some of the largest cities in the ancient world. Feeding such a large population would have been a significant challenge. But new research from the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Kalyan Sekhar Chakraborty reveals one of the ways the civilization was able to sustain so many people: dairy production.

A post-doctoral researcher at U of T Mississauga, Chakraborty found that dairy was being produced as far back as 2500 BCE. It is the earliest known dairy production in India and could have helped produce the type of food surplus needed for trade.

Chakraborty used molecular analysis techniques to study residues from ancient pottery and demonstrated that dairy fats were not only present, but relatively common. He studied 59 shards of pottery from Kotada Bhadli, a small site in the present-day Indian state of Gujarat. Twenty-two of them showed evidence of dairy lipids. It is the earliest known dairy production in India, and dates to the height of the Indus Valley Civilization.

The results of his work are published in Nature Scientific Reports.

“We found that dairy was an integral part of their diet at a site that dates to about 2500 BCE,” says Chakraborty, who is conducting his post-doctoral research with Heather Miller, an associate professor of anthropology at U of T Mississauga.

“This would have allowed the accumulation of a surplus of animal protein, without affecting the number of animals in your herd. The question becomes the role of dairy. Why is it so important in this ancient settlement? It is something that could be exchanged between settlements and regions. It is an opportunity for different economic specializations to develop.”

Chakraborty worked with Professor Greg Slater of McMaster University to determine that dairy was being produced. Pottery is porous and absorbs some of the food cooked inside it. Chakraborty looked for lipids because they don’t dissolve in water. Centuries later, it’s still possible to identify which types of fat are present using a technique called stable isotope analysis.

Using an organic solvent to dissolve the residues, Chakraborty and Slater were able to identify which lipids were present. They analyzed palmitic and stearic acids – both abundant at archaeological sites. Depending on the carbon isotopes present, it’s possible to determine if the lipids in the residue came from plants, fish or ruminant animals.

They were also able to determine which type of ruminant animals were being used for dairy production. Cows and water buffalo ate a diet that consisted primarily of millet, while sheep and goats grazed on nearby grasses. These plants have different photosynthetic processes that produce different acids. From their analysis, the researchers were able to determine that the dairy residues came from animals that had eaten millet.

Chakraborty credits Slater with helping him navigate the chemistry needed to prove that dairy production was occurring. The archaeological record suggested it, but it was impossible to be sure.

“Archaeological remains have their limitations,” Chakraborty says. “You can identify certain things. If animals were used for meat, there will be cut marks on their bones, but uses like dairy are generally invisible.”

The research received support from the Indian Council of Historical Researches, Nehru Trust for the Indian Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the department of organic chemistry, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, among others.

City living: Graduate students at U of T Mississauga explore evolution in urban environments

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 12:48:49 +0000

City living: Graduate students at U of T Mississauga explore evolution in urban environments

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/19/2020 - 08:48

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White clover plants dot the lawn of U of T Mississauga's Alumni House as part of an experiment to study how plants adapt to location and climate change (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

Ty Burke

Topic

Our Community

U of T Mississauga

Some plants grow larger in the city than they do in their natural habitat. For others, the opposite is true when they take root in an urban environment.

“We don't really know why,” says James Santangelo, a PhD student in the department of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. “There's no one-size-fits-all solution to living in the city – if you're a plant.”

White clover is one example of a plant that grows larger in urban environments. But that isn’t the only difference between city clover and its rural counterpart.

“Some clover plants produce hydrogen cyanide and others don't. This evolved as a plant defense – it deters insects from feeding on clover. In cities, clover produces hydrogen cyanide less frequently,” says Santangelo, who is a student in Associate Professor Marc Johnson’s EvoEco lab.

“Our hypothesis was that this occurred because there are fewer insects or small mammals eating the clover, and not as much benefit to producing hydrogen cyanide. There could also be temperature effects. Cities tend to be hotter and that melts snow in the winter. When there's no snow, plants aren't buffered from cold air temperatures. The lower ground temperatures could be causing the reduction in hydrogen cyanide.

“We're still trying to figure out what the driving force is, and whether this is the same across all cities.”

Santangelo is lead author for a book chapter in Urban Evolutionary Biology, a first-of-its-kind publication from Oxford University Press that maps out this relatively new approach to studying how cities can shape species. His co-authors were Johnson, Lindsay Miles, Sophie Breitbart, David Murray-Stoker, Ruth Rivkin and Assistant Professor Rob Ness.

The new book chapter explores this idea of parallel evolution – whether the same types of evolutionary changes will be present in different urban environments. Cities can have more in common with each other than with surrounding habitat, but also retain many distinct differences in climate, density, pollution and other factors – so they provide an opportunity to identify the specific forces that are driving evolutionary change.

“We wanted to provide a glimpse into how often species are responding in similar ways in cities, and whether they are responding to the same environmental cues,” says Santangelo.

He adds that changes in plant life can have a cascading effect within the food chain. For example, their disappearance can also impact the animals that consume them. Recognizing the forces that are shaping change can help inform conservation decisions, Santangelo says.

“For example, is temperature or pollution driving a change? If species are not responding in similar ways, what is driving the differences that we are seeing?”

Warming Arctic more vulnerable to wildfires like those burning in Siberia: U of T Mississauga climate expert

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:03:14 +0000

Warming Arctic more vulnerable to wildfires like those burning in Siberia: U of T Mississauga climate expert

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 07/29/2020 - 15:03

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A firefighter makes a controlled burn to protect a fire-prone area of the forest in Siberian region of Russia (photo by Yevgeny Sofroneyev\TASS via Getty Images)

Topic

Siberia is burning. Hundreds of fires have decimated more than 190,000 square kilometres of northeastern Russia – an area larger than the state of Florida, according to Greenpeace. Fire is a normal part of Siberia’s ecosystem, but thawing permafrost is providing additional tinder while unlocking greenhouse gases stored in the earth for millennia.

For a few months each summer, the growth of northern trees, bushes, and mosses are fuelled by nearly constant sunlight. Over thousands of years, countless plants in the region have lived, died, and accumulated. Those branches and leaves have become part of the permafrost – a permanently frozen layer composed of partially decomposed organic matter.

A warmer climate is melting that layer, drying out the accumulated organic matter, and making the Arctic more vulnerable to wildfires.

“The temperature in Siberia reached 38 C in June, but it’s always a challenge to relate individual events to climate change,” says Kent Moore, a professor of atmospheric physics in the department of chemical and physical sciences at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga. “Climate is a statistical mean, so climate change is a change to the mean. We have always had extreme events, and it's hard to attribute any single event to climate change. But between January and June 2020, it was very warm in Siberia and that makes it easier to understand this as an impact of climate change.

“It was a period of really high temperatures embedded within a period of six months where temperatures were well above average in Siberia. That's significant warming. Statistically, it’s much better to be talking about months than days.”

Warmer conditions in northern regions can have far-reaching implications and what happens in the Arctic affects other parts of the globe, according to Moore.

“When you change the surface temperature in the Arctic, you impact weather patterns. In mid-latitudes, we get some summer heat spells, and these are broken by cold air from the north. When that air is warmer than it used to be, the cooling effect is less dramatic, he explains.

During the first weeks of 2020, wildfires in Australia renewed the public’s focus on climate change, but the pandemic soon displaced it from the headlines. Moore believes COVID-19 provides a useful frame of reference for climate change.

“The fires in Siberia are an effect of burning fossil fuels in recent decades. It is a lagging indicator. We’re reaching record temperatures, but it’s an indicator of carbon use in the past,” he says. “This is a lot like COVID-19. Cases reported today are infections that happened a week ago or more.

“The carbon we're burning today won’t show up in temperatures for another decade. With the climate, we are always seeing the result of something that has already happened. We need to understand that if we don’t get emissions under control, it will get worse.”

Children show preference for local accent – even in multicultural Toronto: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 21:20:53 +0000

Children show preference for local accent – even in multicultural Toronto: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 02/21/2019 - 16:20

Cutline

The study, which involved current and former U of T Mississauga researchers, found English-speaking Toronto children showed preferences for peers who spoke with the locally dominant accent (photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Topic

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

In the sonic whirl of Toronto, where the sounds of city life include more than 200 languages and inclusivity is part of the curriculum at every stage of a child’s education, you wouldn’t expect children to show a preference for one accent over another.

But they do.

A recent study by researchers at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga found the city's children still showed strong preferences for peers who spoke with the locally dominant accent, despite routine exposure to differently accented speakers.

“Previous studies had examined more homogenous communities in suburban Boston and Chicago,” says Elizabeth Johnson, an associate professor in the department of psychology.

“We wondered if those feelings about people who speak in different accents would be the same for children growing up in the Greater Toronto Area, where children are regularly exposed to a wide range of accents.

“We predicted – incorrectly, as it turns out – that children who had familiarity with many different accents would not show these biases in their friendship preferences.”

In collaboration with her former U of T Mississauga postdoctoral student Melissa Paquette-Smith, now an assistant professor at UCLA, Johnson published “The Effect of Accent Exposure on Children’s Sociolinguistic Evaluation of Peers” in the January issue of Developmental Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association. Researchers from the University of Nottingham, the University of Waterloo and Sookmyung Women’s University collaborated on the research.

The study showed five- and six-year-old English-speaking children images of two children on a computer screen. One child in each pair shown on the screen spoke English with a Canadian accent and the other spoke English with either a British or a Korean accent. The pairs of children were as indistinguishable from one another as possible, with their accent being the only major difference between them.

Overall, children showed a preference for the child who spoke with a local Canadian accent, although this preference was much stronger when the other child spoke with a Korean accent, rather than a British one.

Johnson cautions that this study deals in first impressions, and the results don’t mean that children who speak with non-local accents will necessarily face social isolation at school.

“Having a bias does not equate with ill-will or thinking badly of someone who has an accent. That is not something that we looked into. We only asked ‘who would you rather be friends with?’” she says.

“Taking away all other information except accent allowed us to reveal that children were sensitive to accent, and it was playing into their friendship preferences. But that’s an artificial situation, and if we had given the children more information – for example, a reason for the Korean accent speaker to be chosen over the Canadian accent speaker, like being nice or more social – we might have seen very different results.

“Recent research suggests that you can actually overwhelm these biases, if you give children information that the native accent speaker is mean and the foreign-accent speaker is nice.”

In recent years, people have grown far more attuned to discrimination based on appearance, but Johnson notes that we also rely strongly on the way people speak to form social judgments.

“That's true for adults, and also for really young kids,” she says. “The seeds of these sorts of biases are present very early in development. People are aware of racial biases, but should also be aware of biases based on the way people speak. These biases emerge really early, and can be taken into account in the classroom and in social settings.

“Understanding why children develop biases against speakers who speak differently may help us to design interventions that can decrease or maybe even prevent these biases from developing in the first place.”

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