Sharon Oosthoek
ON Nature
Short-sighted discovery
ON Nature, Summer 2010 by Sharon Oosthoek Go outside and play. It’s a rare child who hasn’t heard those words, and now there’s another reason to heed them – better eyesight. Australian and Singaporean researchers have found the more time kids spend outdoors, the less likely they are to be nearsighted. From 2003 to 2005, [...]
Invasion of the earthworms
ON Nature, Spring 2010 by Sharon Oosthoek It sounds like a bad Hollywood film, but truth can be stranger than fiction. While gardeners love to see earthworms in their soil and eco-conscious apartment dwellers rely on them to compost food waste, what most people don’t know is that the vast majority of worms in Ontario [...]
Unwelcome visitors
ON Nature, Winter 2009/2010 by Sharon Oosthoek Fisheries biologists have unexpectedly discovered round gobies in the Thames, Sydenham, Ausable and Grand rivers and are now sounding the alarm over how this invasive fish may affect endangered species. The Great Lakes tributaries were long thought to be immune to such an invasion thanks to their status [...]
Chemical imbalance
ON Nature, Spring 2009 by Sharon Oosthoek Two dominant and much discussed threats to the boreal forest are industrial interests and logging. Now another threat has surfaced. According to researchers from Queen’s and York universities, lakes in the forest are suffering from “aquatic osteoporosis” due to declining calcium levels.
Wasp eats beetle
ON Nature, Spring 2009 by Sharon Oosthoek A wasp native to Ontario may soon be pressed into service as a lead investigator into potential infestations by emerald ash borers. Trials that University of Guelph researchers conducted and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) partially funded show that Cerceris fumipennis can determine, in as little as [...]
Raising the dead: Atlantic salmon Returns
ON Nature, Winter 2007/2008 by Sharon Oosthoek Oliver Haddrath stretches out his hand, palm up. He is holding what little remains of an ancient predator that once dominated the waters of Lake Ontario. Seated in a tiny, well-ordered office on the third floor of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), surrounded by flow charts showing genetic [...]
Polar Bear Count Down
ON Nature, Spring 2008 by Sharon Oosthoek How many polar bears live in the north? Counting animals in the wild has never been a straightforward or easy task, but because climate change has altered polar bear habitat so markedly, scientists are finding that deriving an accurate count is proving especially difficult.
© 2012 Sharon Oosthoek. All Rights Reserved.
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