The Espace pour la vie webzine | Summer 2025
Restoring marshes to life, tracking belugas with DNA and unraveling the secrets of a discrete grasshopper… Scientists from Espace pour la vie are leading conservation projects with the potential to make a real difference. Discover these essential missions for biodiversity!
Back in 2019, I was bored, and decided to look for something to fill the time online. After a bit of searching, I discovered that scientists sometimes put data online for ordinary people to help analyze. I’ve always had a natural inclination towards science, so this “community science” concept appealed to me, as it meant that I could get involved without needing to have official training and qualifications. I was particularly drawn to one particular project called Backyard Worlds, which looks for brown dwarfs (objects in between planets and stars). Participating in Backyard Worlds became my primary focus during my spare time. By a certain point, I had found some interesting candidates and I was invited to be an “advanced user” – a group of citizen scientists who join the team of astronomers running the project on weekly Zoom calls to discuss the status of the project.
Exposure to not only the science, but the scientists themselves, took my life on a different path than I could have imagined. As I started learning about the physics behind brown dwarfs, I found myself becoming more and more interested in doing some research of my own. It inspired me to start an undergraduate degree in astrophysics, which I’ve just entered my final year of. I started collaborating with an astronomer on the team called Jonathan Gagné to study young brown dwarfs (younger than ~200 million years, which sounds really old, but brown dwarfs live for billions of years, so it’s actually young!). I even published a peer-reviewed paper about a young brown dwarf I discovered. I’m now hoping to go and do a masters with Jonathan at Université de Montréal when I finish my undergraduate degree. Last year, I was invited to give a talk about community science at the Cool Stars conference (a meeting of brown dwarf, low mass star, solar and exoplanet astronomers), where I was able to meet some of the astronomers on the Backyard Worlds team in person for the first time, which was an amazing experience. It’s incredible to think that this amazing journey started when I just happened to be bored one day, and it has spiraled into a possible future career, and a complete transformation of my life.
To learn more about the research project that Tom Bickle and Jonathan Gagné, scientific advisor at the Planétarium, participated in, read our article.
Light pollution has negative impacts on wildlife, plant life and human health in general, apart from upsetting amateur and professional astronomers in their skywatching.
Scientists from the Jardin botanique are building up experience so that they can better restore and protect these endangered ecosystems.
In Québec, the restoration of peat bogs is well under control. But when it comes to bringing marshes and swamps back to life, knowledge is still limited. And that’s exactly the challenge being taken up by the team of Stéphanie Pellerin and Marie-Hélène Brice, botanists and researchers at the Jardin botanique and the Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, in collaboration with a team from Université Laval. The goal of their project, named Projet RARE: find the best “recipe” for restoring these fragile ecosystems, and propose solutions tailored to each site.
Replanting some trees and a few plants isn’t enough to restore a marsh or a swamp. Every site has unique characteristics: nature of the soil, type of water present (surface or groundwater), flooding duration, plant species in place, and so on. “Unlike peat bogs, where we have a well-established method, there’s no universal approach for restoring a marsh or a swamp,” explains Stéphanie Pellerin. “We have to adapt to each site on the basis of the species found in natural marshes and swamps located nearby.”
On the ground, the first step consists in establishing plant cover using a restricted number of plants (like certain sedge and rush varieties) to limit the invasion of exotic species and re-create the conditions typical of a wetland. “We start by planting local species, and then, over time, we progressively enrich plant diversity,” she explains. The team’s expertise is called on by municipalities and different environmental protection organizations for restoration projects.
In the Farnham area, the team is testing the creation of a microtopography – variations in relief on the ground surface – to observer how that influences tree growth. “We compare the growth of trees planted on mounds with the growth of those installed on flat ground. The idea,” Stéphanie Pellerin sums up, “is to see if these reliefs encourage their development.”
Wetlands cover about 11 percent of Québec’s territory,1 but are disappearing at an alarming rate. Since colonization, half of them have been destroyed. And it’s not finished: a 2013 study showed that in the St. Lawrence lowlands, one-fifth of remaining wetlands had disappeared since the start of the 2000s. To counteract those losses, the government since 2017 has imposed compensation or restoration measures for destroyed wetlands.
Marshes and swamps play a crucial role in the preservation of biodiversity, in water regulation and in carbon capture. Thanks to the efforts of scientists from the Jardin botanique, Québec is moving little by little towards better protection of those ecosystems.
Marshes and swamps are two types of wetland where plant life and soils are shaped by water.
Marshes are dominated by herbaceous plants like grasses, flowers and low-growing plants, so they look like a flooded meadow. Swamps, meanwhile, are characterized by the presence of trees and evoke a partly submerged forest.
Marsh
Swamp
For a better understanding of the insect, and to safeguard its protection, a team from the Insectarium is planning to rear specimens.
The grasshopper Melanoplus madeleineae, which can be found exclusively in the Magdalen Islands, was described for the first time in 1978.1 Unlike certain other species that are able to travel hundreds of kilometers, this one is incapable of flight and is therefore confined to the islands. Come summer, scientists will be making their way there to capture some females with the hope of breeding them and learning more about the species. It’s likely to be a tough job: the insect is hard to spot, since it produces no sound and embraces a nighttime lifestyle.
“Pretty much all its biology is a mystery: its life cycle, its diet, its manner of reproduction, the number of eggs laid,” itemizes Julia Mlynarek, entomologist at the Insectarium. “We don’t even know the size of the population. If some major event were to strike the Magdalen Islands,” she worries, “the species could disappear.” In 2016, a report from the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada already called attention to the grasshopper’s vulnerability.
The nonprofit organization Attention FragÎles, which protects biodiversity on Magdalen Islands territory, has been monitoring the grasshopper population. In 2024, several dozen individuals were observed, compared to just eight in 2023.2 “If it takes the eggs two years to hatch, that could explain the population variation from one year to the next,” Julia Mlynarek believes. Data collected this summer will have an influence on the conservation strategies to be deployed. “To protect the species, its natural habitat has to be preserved,” the researcher insists. That habitat is threatened primarily by climatic and human disturbances.
2 Rapport d’inventaire; Criquet des Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Melanoplus madeleineae), sur l’archipel des Îles de la Madeleine (Inventory Report: Magdalen Islands Grasshopper [Melanoplus madeleineae] on the Magdalen Islands Archipelago), 2024. Presented to the Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Government of Canada. Attention FragÎles, regional environmental council, Magdalen Islands, Québec. 11 pp. Under review.
Breeding grasshoppers in captivity is no easy job! Thierry Boislard, assistant entomologist at the Insectarium, oversees insect breeding and knows how difficult it can be to re-create perfectly the conditions needed to get grasshopper eggs to hatch. In general, those eggs go through a period of diapause, in other words a dormant state that allows them to survive harsh environmental conditions before hatching in the spring.
But in the laboratory, triggering the emergence is a complex matter. “Is it the temperature, the humidity level or the photoperiod that influences hatching?” wonders Thierry Boislard. Finding the right combination of factors is a puzzle. If this summer’s capture comes off as planned and the specimens can be studied under the care of the Insectarium team, the entomologists will have a front-row seat to learning more about its life cycle, its development and its host plants.
And who knows? Maybe we’ll get to admire these grasshoppers one day soon in the Insectarium’s vivariums!
A single sample of water collected in the St. Lawrence River Estuary contains a wealth of secrets about the species evolving in the beluga’s habitat.
Very soon, people living near the St. Lawrence River Estuary, as well as tourists passing through, will be invited to get involved in a unique community-science project: code Béluga. Their mission? Helping detect the presence of species in the beluga’s ecosystem…by taking a sample of water!
The sampling will be done by following a protocol established by Génome Québec and with the guidance of the Biodôme’s education team. It will be carried out at three points in the year, during spring and summer, at four different locations in the estuary.
But how can a single water sample reveal the presence of species? Every organism releases genetic material in its environment through its feces, its urine, its blood or through skin fragments. This is environmental DNA (eDNA).
“It’s a question of making the invisible visible!”
Francis C. Cardinal, educator and scientific designer at the Biodôme.
Less intrusive than capturing or direct observation, this method will nonetheless shed light on the state of biodiversity and the changing ecosystem of the St. Lawrence Estuary.
The initiative will allow us to mobilize the public around the importance of preserving aquatic ecosystems. The results will afterwards be made available both for research purposes and to the public as a means of supporting efforts aimed at conserving key species in the St. Lawrence.
The general public visiting the Biodôme will also be able to plunge into this scientific adventure thanks to a series of educational activities relating to the St. Lawrence Estuary, the beluga and environmental DNA.
With code Béluga, community science will unquestionably open a new window on the marine biodiversity of the St. Lawrence!
At Espace pour la vie, we have a chance to collaborate with specialists from a wide range of backgrounds. Two days after she appeared on the TV show Tout le monde en parle, we met up with Sasha Luccioni on her visit to the Insectarium, which she affectionally calls her “happy place.” We took advantage of the occasion to ask her a few questions about her work and her role in preserving biodiversity.
It was in the framework of my former role at the Mila artificial intelligence research institute that I met the Insectarium team. The museum was being rebuilt at the time, and they wanted to launch an application for recognizing and identifying butterflies. This artificial intelligence (AI) feature now integrated into the Espace pour la vie app allows users to identify the butterflies they photograph in the Great Vivarium.
Incidentally, a friend of mine told me that he enjoyed taking pictures of himself with the app to see which butterfly would be suggested. What’s interesting is that one butterfly or other will always be generated. And that’s the sort of creative idea that occurs to me when I think of projects related to AI.
Just like this app, I’d like to develop projects using AI to raise people’s awareness about biodiversity. For example, a photobooth that would show you what insect you look like based on the color of your clothes. Or else, an interactive exhibition where visitors share a story about, or their vision of, biodiversity, and AI generates images or videos that illustrate what they’re saying.
One of the problems about monitoring biodiversity is that we only have data, photos and observations in places where a lot of people live, in towns and in the countryside, while there are very few, to take an example, for the far north. There are places that are very well documented: for instance in Germany, where records about butterflies go as far back as 1840, and these data are essential, because they enable us to assess how ecosystems are affected by climate change and then to propose solutions to governments.
To make up for this lack of information, scientists have developed automated biodiversity monitoring stations. Powered by solar energy, they make it possible to collect data in unfrequented areas. These stations generate and process large quantities of standardized, reliable data.
So, AI can be used to collect data and help scientists demonstrate that biodiversity is in decline and evolve solutions for sustainable management of local habitats.
There are also tools accessible to everyone that have the ability to bring us closer to nature, like eButterfly and iNaturalist, which have AI-generated biodiversity identification tools.
It’s not all black or all white, it’s really a case-by-case approach. We have to think of the context and consider alternatives. We can make a comparison, for example, with means of transportation. Do I take my car, the bike or public transport? It will depend on my physical condition, my environment and my destination.
We really have to think about uses and our goals. For instance, if we want to make calculations, we need to use a calculator... However, if we need explanations to understand the calculation, then AI will be useful.
Another example of very poor usage: when people use ChatGPT as a simple search engine. It requires a lot of energy, and its use wasn’t needed. On the other hand, it’s useful for generating something new. For example, I often use open-source AI alternatives like huggingface.co/chat to find titles for articles I’ve written.
I think the best future for AI is one where innovations are shared and open. Web giants have a tendency to keep their models private, something that hinders innovation and the progress of science. Science has to be open so that we can reproduce, critique and improve on the results. That’s why I opt to use open source code and why I collaborate with organizations like Espace pour la vie.
A large number of urban dwellers have forgotten the sense of wonder inspired by the sight of a starry sky; it’s a form of direct contact with the beauty of nature that we’ve lost and that we could regain with very little sacrifice.
In 2018, Ville de Montréal’s urban planning and mobility department began to replace its old high-pressure sodium bulbs with LED lights. In summer 2020, the team from the Planétarium analyzed the impact that the change had on light pollution in Montréal. This study made it possible to identify three recommendations to follow for limiting light pollution. You can let yourself be inspired by it in choosing the lighting for your own home.
Blue-colored LEDs of over 4000 K must be avoided at all costs. The use of lighting fixtures that emit amber light (therefore warmer, though not reddish) is recommended. LEDs that are 1800 K and under are particularly beneficial for reducing light pollution.
Amber LEDs, often wrongly perceived as being too red, are similar in hue to old street lamps; they offer better color perception, and control that makes it possible to efficiently light the roadway while minimizing light pollution.
Choose a lighting fixture that directs no light above the horizon by opting for directional lighting (“full-cutoff” type). In selecting a fixture that diffuses light only towards the ground, you’re lighting the place that you want without causing any glare.
Use a timer to automatically turn off lights during the night, or installing a motion detector, can reduce lighting time.
All these strategies will help get us another look at a fabulously beautiful starry sky, without sacrificing our safety. If we make the effort to illuminate strategically, there’s nothing but advantages!
You can learn more by reading our blog on the impact of LED technology on light pollution in Montréal.
