hiiiiiiiiii it’s me!!!
i am so thrilled to announce i’m now a liber ero fellow!!! 🫶🏼💫🥰
so excited to start this journey and continue working in white sturgeon conservation
i’ll be identifying population stressors that could be leading to mortalities and declines across british columbia
👩🏻🔬🧪🌐🌎🦑🐟
We are pleased to announce the 2026 Liber Ero Fellows!
liberero.ca/meet-the-fel...
Differences in the relative percentage of life stages exposed to climatic stressor(s) (a, c, e) or assessed for physiological traits (b, d, f) across the traits (top row), taxa (middle row), and climate change stressors surveyed (bottom row). Studies categorized in “development” yet assessing adult animals are studies measuring whole animal size, growth or measuring multiple life stages. Other stressors not captured by these broad categories (i.e. diet, UV radiation; n = 6) and studies investigating interactions between climatic and non-climatic stressors (n = 138) are not displayed for clarity. Note that the values do not correspond to strict percentages of studies because some studies have investigated multiple life stages, traits, taxa or stressors. Representative diagrams were drawn by me!
new paper and illustrations 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎🌐
We asked are embryos understudied in conservation physiology?
Turns out, despite the increasing recognition of the ecological importance & sensitivity of embryos, we found no evidence that embryo research has gained traction over the past 10yrs
paper link below👇🏼
Ooooh. Cool new paper on origins of life. A simple 45-nucleotide RNA molecule that can perfectly copy itself.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
hiiii it’s me!!
as a pretty burnt out scientist but i’ve found joy again in making ceramics :)
i’m working on my first small batch drop that will be inspired by my love of color and the natural world
if you have instagram and want to be friends find me @madart_ceramics
👩🏻🔬🧪🌎🍒🫐🐚💫
i’ve been dabbling in pottery to keep some portion of my sanity together and turns out i super love it and want to make it my whole life 💫🥲
is this the scientist to artist pipeline? 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎
here are some to go cups i made recently! hand painted fruits on speckled clay
#pottery #ceramics #handmade
a juvenile sturgeon madison is holding prior to release, this size sturgeon loves a cuddle puddle!
3 sturgeon stickers created by madison, a white sturgeon, pallid sturgeon, and atlantic sturgeon
happy #sturgeonsaturday yall 🧪👩🏻🔬 🌎
Did ya know that during winter sturgeon do a thing i call cuddle puddle? they find a deep hole to overwinter in & hang out cuddle puddling until spring! we are working to identify & protect these areas now
support the sturgies, get a sticker: tinyurl.com/2fjnxy7w
a blue sticker that says ice out, with Liam Ramos bunny hat hanging on the O. Proceeds to mutual aid funds in Minneapolis
ice continues to kidnap, torture, and murder human beings across the US and right now, especially in Minneapolis
proceeds from this sticker to mutual aid funds in MN
abolish ice
👩🏻🔬🧪🌎🦑 🐟
www.madisonearhart.com/product-page...
What’s happening on the Bathurst calving grounds?
We found strong spatiotemporal overlap between grizzlies and caribou during calving, highlighting potential risk during this sensitive period. Deeply grateful to the collaborators who made this work possible!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thanks Jim, much appreciated!
yooo everyone!!
will did a super cool study with big implications for salmon!!
He was able to create biomarkers using teeny tiny pieces of gills (non lethal) to identify if a salmon is food limited or not
this means they can go in the wild and determine if, when and where salmon are starving 🧪🌎👩🏻🔬
New research out in @conphysjournal.bsky.social We use RNA sequencing to identify gill markers for food deprivation in Chinook salmon.
academic.oup.com/conphys/arti...
We will deploy these markers with panels for other stressors and pathogens to evaluate impacts on survival of wild salmon
PSF scientists, led by @wbuggiii.bsky.social, recently published a research breakthrough on identifying food deprivation in wild salmon.
Learn more: academic.oup.com/conphys/arti...
newwwww illustration below :) check out this sturgeon paper!!!
Credit to @madisonearhart.bsky.social for the awesome illustration and a great team of co authors including @biomatt.bsky.social
Graphical depiction of the changes to the muscle transcriptome that result in persistent enhanced growth phenotypes in lake sturgeon
What underlies plasticity and persistent enhanced growth following warm temperature exposure?
We sequenced lake sturgeon muscle tissue to find out
A variety of molecular mechanisms and cellular changes work together to increase muscular development across timescales
🧪🌎🌐🐠
tinyurl.com/mr2n2cvb
sometimes I do field work in the most gorgeous water (Harrison river, BC) and you can see the sturgeon swim away forever 🥹
this is a nice close up of the scutes that cover sturgeon for protection, they have several rows of these bony plates that can be really sharp!
#sturgeonsaturday 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎🌐
did you know we had ~80 huge sturgeon die this year (that we know of) in 2
BC rivers? These deaths occurred during the summer when the sockeye salmon were returning
sturgeon eat many salmon at once, and this may be overloading their metabolic capacity during hot summers 😱
#sturgeonsaturday 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎🌐
Wildlife deserves more than minimum viable populations.
Conservation should aim for ecosystems where species can thrive, not just survive. 💥🦬🌲
👉 Read more:
releasing these huuuuge sturgeon and watching them swim away is the best part of my job 🫶🏼
another week in the field complete, and one step closer to finding out what is harming these ancient fish 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎🌐🦑
#sturgeonsaturday
climate change is causing larger temperature variations BUT we know very little about how variable temperatures impact sensitive, developing fish
in this new study with @tblanchard.bsky.social & @trishschulte.bsky.social we found surprising impacts during development and after hatch!!
🧪👩🏻🔬 🐠 🌎 🌐👇🏼
A photo of two Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) embryos. Photo credit: Tessa Blanchard
Atlantic killifish are robust little fish, but now @tblanchard.bsky.social & co reveal that fluctuating temperatures while the embryos are developing in the egg can have beneficial and damaging consequences
journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...
Excited to share another paper from work I did during my PhD with @trishschulte.bsky.social and @madisonearhart.bsky.social. We looked at how fish embryos respond differently to constant and fluctuating temperatures! 🐟
#sturgeonsaturday 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎🌐
the last 2 years i’ve been investigating why these giant fish are dying across BC
and i’ve started to identify the stressors that could be driving mortality!!
if you want to learn more, check out this video: tinyurl.com/4m4xxrkh
tldr; it’s getting hot out here yall 🥵
in the field for #sturgeonsaturday
ive spent the last 2 yrs investigating what is killing BC white sturgeon
unfortunately, these deaths continue & we’ve had over 50 adult sturgeon die in the fraser river in the last ~6 weeks
every fish i sample is another step closer to solving the mystery🧪👩🏻🔬🌎🌐
madison holding a sturgeon prior to release on a boat in the fraser river
hiiiii i’ve been mia for a bit but im back with looooots of field work photos - we’re doing some really cool sturgeon science this summer!!
here i am, in my element holding my fave creature, trying to save the dinosaurs one sturgie at a time 🫶🏼
#sturgeonsaturday everyday 🧪👩🏻🔬🐟🌎🌐
a sticker illustrating 3 women wearing an NSF lab coat, a NASA shirt, and NIH scrubs with the phrase girls just wanna have funds underneath. a portion of proceeds from this sticker will go directly to stand up for science to support funding initiatives
the same sticker in the wild on my very dented water bottle with the ocean in the background
out of pure rage for the obliteration of science funding i made a sticker
cuts are disproportionately impacting EC scientists & women~particularly Black women and women of color
25% of proceeds will go to @standupforscience.bsky.social to keep fighting! 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎
plz share widely
tinyurl.com/5n7kjbwt
a screenshot of the interview page showing a picture of madison and a blurb describing the csz outstanding thesis award
i was recently interviewed by @csz-sczofficial.bsky.social about my phd, science, art, really all things 👩🏻🔬🧪🐠🌎
still over the moon i got this award, sometimes i am still reminding myself that i did a phd 🥲
check it out! 👇🏼
blog.csz-scz.ca/2025/06/30/s...
a close up of a baby sturgeon, in water, held in a yellow sling
the horrors persist, but so do closeups of baby sturgeon
everyone say hi to the cutest fish alive!!
#sturgeonsaturday 🧪👩🏻🔬🌎🌐
