March 15, 2023
It’s soil course season and our next course is only two weeks away! Head over to our Eventbrite site for more details and to register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/o/paragon-soil-and-environmental-consulting-inc-32323156269
We are looking forward to learning with you!
February 23, 2023
Fun Fact: Lichens may have been the first farmers on the planet.
The simple lichen Winfrenatia from the Devonian Period (407 million years ago) was made mostly of undifferentiated fungal hyphae arranged as a mat, anchoring it to its growing surface. Scattered throughout this mat, cyanobacterial cells (photobionts) were held in place in tiny pits, like “pigs in a pen”. The fungi fed on the energy the photobionts generated when they were exposed to sunlight. A cross section of Winfrenatia is below (drawing by Falconaumanni from Wikimedia Commons). Just look at those little piggies!
On the spectrum of mutually beneficial interactions, it is difficult to separate the fungi/photobiont relationship from any other form of domestication. Some fungi even resort to rustling – only forming lichens by killing other lichen-forming fungi and stealing their photobionts before settling down as a lichen themselves.
If you’re interested in more reading, see Otherlands, by Thomas Halliday. A great read about natural history… 550,000,000 years of it… I bet he’s a fungi at parties…If I ever meet him, I’ll give him a hyph-ive.
February 21, 2023
Canadian Conservation and Land Management will be offering a free webinar on February 28, 2023 to discuss “The Application of Drone and UAV Technology in Conservation Work”. Click on this link for more information and to register: The application of drone and UAV technology in conservation work Registration, Tue, 28 Feb 2023 at 11:00 AM | Eventbrite
February 16, 2023
We are two weeks away from the first Paragon soil course of the season! Get the details and your tickets here:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/o/paragon-soil-and-environmental-consulting-inc-32323156269
We are looking forward to learning with you!
February 1, 2023
As environmental consultants working with pipeline construction, we often think about the future of the land and its ability to recover. A study done by our own Brittany Flemming and Vince Futoransky, alongside Wade Pruett, has detailed a way to measure restoration success and more specifically, the success of the natural recovery approach. More cost-effective and less labour-intensive, with more diverse results? Read on: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec.13749
In November, Paragon hosted four students from the ALES Faculty at U of A as part of a mini-internship over the fall reading week break. The students met with our President, Lee Waterman, attended a soil lab, and learned about Paragon’s various work scopes, such as vegetation and wetlands, soil monitoring and construction, bioengineering, and soil mapping and GIS. We had a lot of fun and hope to do this again next year!
December 2, 2022
Fun Fact: If a pollinator is spending too much time drinking nectar, a flower will smack it with a stamen to encourage it to move along.
In some flowers, pollen-containing mobile stamens snap forward when a visiting insect’s tongue touches the nectar-producing parts. Linnaeus first observed these “mobile stamens” in 1775 but no one has been able to explain their purpose…until now.
A team of researchers from China recently found that plants use rapidly moving stamens to enhance the turnover of bees and flies on their flowers, thereby reducing their nectar costs per successfully transported pollen grain. In their study on barberry flowers, insects visiting flowers with immobilised stamens stayed 3.6 times longer and removed more nectar than those visiting flowers with mobile stamens. They also found that insect visitors deposited pollen from flowers with mobile stamens on about three times more flowers, and on flowers further away, increasing the likelihood of reproductive success for the plant.
Sounds like a pushy waiter at a restaurant… truly a-pollen’ behaviour. They should bee ashamed.
If you’re interested in reading more, see their paper here: https://elifesciences.org/articles/81449
October 28, 2022
We were able to raise $2,600 for the Nistawoyou Association Friendship Centre this year in honour of Truth and Reconciliation Day. The Friendship Centre promotes positive relationships between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous peoples which helps communities reach their full potential – click here for more info about NAFC and the great work they do: https://nistawoyouafc.com/
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