DR. PAUL SZPAK

Opportunities are available for graduate students interesting in stable isotope analyses of ancient, historical, and modern marine mammals from the Arctic. This project is funded by an NSERC Discovery Grant (2020-2025) and students admitted to the M.Sc. program in environmental and life sciences at Trent University are provided with financial support for two years. Students admitted to the Ph.D. program in environmental and life sciences at Trent University are provided with financial support for four years. The larger goals of the project are to understand how these ecosystems have changed through the Holocene using stable isotope analysis and related techniques.

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Examples of publications on related topics:

• Skovrind M, Louis M, Ferguson SH, Glazov DM, Litovka DI, Loseto L, Meschersky IG, Miller MM, Petr M, Postma L, Rozhnov VV, Scott M, Westbury MV, Szpak P, Friesen TM, Lorenzen ED, 2024. Elucidating the sustainability of 700 y of Inuvialuit beluga whale hunting in the Mackenzie River Delta, Northwest Territories, Canada. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, e2405993121. doi:10.1073/pnas.2405993121.  [DOWNLOAD .pdf]

• Routledge J, Sonne C, Letcher RJ, Dietz R, Szpak P, 2023. Unprecedented shift in Canadian High Arctic polar bear food web unsettles four millennia of stability. Anthropocene 43, 100397. doi: 10.1016/j.ancene.2023.100397. [DOWNLOAD .pdf]

• Louis M, Routledge J, Heide-Jørgensen MP, Szpak P, Lorenzen ED, 2022. Sex and size matter: foraging ecology of offshore harbour porpoises in waters around Greenland. Marine Biology 169, 140. doi:10.1007/s00227-022-04123-x. [DOWNLOAD .pdf] 

• Szpak P, Buckley M, 2020. Sulfur isotopes (δ34S) in Arctic marine mammals: Indicators of benthic vs. pelagic foraging? Marine Ecology Progress Series.

• Szpak P, Julien M-H, Royle TCA, Savelle JM, Yang DY, Richards MP, 2020. Sexual differences in the foraging ecology of 19th century beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) from the Canadian High Arctic. Marine Mammal Science 36, 451-471. doi:10.1111/mms.12655. [DOWNLOAD .pdf]

• Szpak P., Savelle, J.M., Conolly, J., Richards, M.P., 2019. Variation in Late Holocene Marine Environments in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Evidence from Ringed Seal Bone Collagen Stable Isotope Compositions. Quaternary Science Reviews 211, 136-155. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.03.016. [DOWNLOAD .pdf]

• Skovrind M, Castruita JAS, Haile J, Treadaway EC, Gopalakrishnan S, Westbury MV, Heide-Jørgensen MP, Szpak P, Lorenzen ED, 2019. Hybridization between two high Arctic cetaceans confirmed by genomic analysis. Scientific Reports 9, 7729. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-44038-0. [DOWLOAD .pdf]

• Szpak P, Buckley M, Darwent CM, Richards MP, 2018. Long-term ecological changes in marine mammals driven by recent warming in northwestern Alaska. Global Change Biology 24, 490-503. doi:10.1111/gcb.13880. [DOWNLOAD .pdf]