We had a great time at the McGill BGSA Retreat at Gault Nature Reserve this past weekend! 🌲❄️
@picard-m.bsky.social
@vanmierlo.bsky.social
@biomcgill.bsky.social

A beautiful fall day at the Gault Open Doors event 2025 talking to the community about aquatic invasive species 🐟🌱
@picard-m.bsky.social #goldfish #invasivespecies #aquaticecology #tubenosegoby #roundgoby #gaultnaturereserve

Thanks to Alex Tran at Gault Nature Reserve for the awesome photos of myself and research assistant Édouard Paquette weighing and measuring our goldfish at the end of this summer’s experiment! #freshwaterecology #invasivespecies #PhD #research #goldfish

I use spectrophotometry to measure chlorophyll-a on tiles at the bottom of my goldfish mesocosms. The chlorophyll-a concentrations are used as a proxies for algal growth to better understand how goldfish invasions impact benthic algae. #freshwaterbiology #invasivespecies #goldfish #algae

Goldfish generate turbidity (cloudiness) by suspending sediment when they feed. This decreases sunlight penetration in the water and negatively impacts native macrophytes and visual predators. I use a turbidimeter to accurately determine the turbidity in my mesocosms from water samples.

I use this fluoroprobe to measure the concentrations of green algae, bluegreen algae, diatoms, and cryptophyta in each of my mescosms to see how goldfish impact the algal composition of a shallow pond ecosystem.

Each mesocosm in my goldfish experiment contains 0-6 goldfish. Notice the turbidity difference between a mesocosm with 6 fish and one with 0 fish below!

This is my experimental setup at Gault Nature Reserve in Mont-Sainte-Hilaire, QC. Each goldfish is measured before being added to one of the 36 experimental mesocosms. We record different parameters to measure the impacts of goldfish on these artificial ponds, including turbidity and algae growth.

This is Burbank Pond in Danville, QC, where we collected 106 goldfish for this summer's artificial pond experiment on goldfish impacts. Burbank Pond currently has a large invasive goldfish population 🐟