NEWS FROM THE LAB

April 2026

• Congratulations to Tess Billard and James Day who completed their B.Sc.(Hons) theses.

• Congratulations to Nick Murphy on winning a NSERC USRA for the second year in a row.

• Welcome to Laura Knapwerth who joins the lab as a new PhD student. She is co-supervised by Jen Perry at St. Francis Xavier University and will be working primarily out of there on sexual selection in aquatic insects.

• Craig received new funding from The Foundation for Conservation of Atlantic Salmon, for a new tracking project in Western Brook - Gros Morne National Park.

March 2026

• Team Fish have been busy.

• Ava and Mikael presented some of their research as the NoWPaS symposium in Iceland.

• James presented his work at the Science Atlantic Biology & Applied Aquatic Sciences conference in New Brunwick.

• Craig attended the Nova Scotia Salmon Symposium.

• Tyler presented at the project wrap up for the Canada Nature Fund for Aquatic Species at Risk project in western Newfoundland.

June 2025

• Team Salmon and Team Redfish are in the field this month

• Craig is being joined by colleagues from Sweden, the USA, and Parks Canada for an acoustic telemetry project on anadromous brook trout and Atlantic salmon in Western Brook, Gros Morne National Park of Canada.
  
  

May 2025

•  Paper led by former MSc student, Ranjan Wagle, as been accepted for publication by the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society

• Team Salmon has started 9 weeks of intense field work on the Exploits River. We are capturing smolts from 4 locations, electrofishing 12 tributaries, conducting invertebrate surveys, determining diet of salmon parr, conducting gravel surveys, and radio tagging 185 adult salmon.

• Team Redfish conducting a week of gillneting in the Bonne Bay fjord for our genetics project on this unique population.

• Congratulations to Emily Simms and Kaitlyn Rowsell from Team Trout, on completing their B.Sc.(Hons) theses

• Congratulations to Nick Murphy and Chizurum Azu-Emuchay on winning NSERC Undergraduate Research Awards. They will be working with Team Salmon for the summer.

December 2024

• Ky Schlosberg joined Team Trout as a new M.Sc. student. He led the tagging of 255 spawning brown trout this fall, and we installed a PIT tag array in spawning streams to track their movements.

• Team Salmon used a helicopter to track movements of 90 adult salmon that were radio tagged in the summer.

January 2024

Recruitment of new trainees.

o   Recruitment continues for our upcoming salmon team. This work is in collaboration with Prof. Shawn Leroux, and a not-for-profit salmon focused group called ERMA.

o   Craig is recruiting a new student to work on brown trout charisma and how it relates to movement and spawning. See this link http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~cfpurchase/MScPosition-trout-CraigPurchase.pdf

o   It looks like Craig will be recruiting a new student to work on a special population of Acadian redfish. Stay tuned for more information.

December 2023

Craig, and Prof. Shawn Leroux have received some large grants that will enable several years of Atlantic salmon field work in the coming years. We have started recruiting a variety of trainees to take part in this work.

Three current and former MSc students have teamed up with Craig and have submitted a manuscript on the potential for brown trout hybridization.

November 2023

We had an intense month tagging spawning brown trout and conducting sperm competition experiments between brown trout and Atlantic salmon for Connor’s thesis.

September 2023

We are gearing up for salmonid spawning season. MSc student Connor Hanley is leading research on hybridization between native Atlantic salmon and invasive brown trout.

Welcome

o   to Katlyn Rowsell, who joins the lab as an undergraduate MUCEP student.

o   back to Nick Murphy, who has worked with us for the past two summers, and now joins us as an undergraduate research assistant.

Craig was recently in Sweden and Norway where he

o   attended the Biology of Spermatozoa conference

o   presented seminars

§  Evolutionary ecology of salmonid gametes: the potential influence of die ton hybridization, Sept 11 at the Institute of Freshwater Research of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, in Stockholm Sweden.

§  Sperm biology & post-ejaculatory female mate choice in salmonid fishes, Sept 15 at University of Agder, in Kristiansand Norway.

o   sampled invasive brook trout and native brown trout with researchers from the University of Gothenburg.

o   met with researchers at the Kristineberg and Tjärnä field stations.

 January 2023

Manuscript by former PhD student Marco Graziano was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

o   He was also featured in the early career spotlight

§  https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.245427

o   Graziano, M., S. Palit, A. Yethiraj, S. Immler, M.J.G. Gage, & C.F. Purchase*. Frequency-dependent viscosity of salmon ovarian fluid has biophysical implications for sperm-egg interactions. Journal of Experimental Biology. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.244712