Anna Hargreaves, MSc Conservation Biologist Anna joined the Centre for Conservation Research in May 2007 as the latest recipient of the 2007 Conservation Research Fellowship. She came to the Zoo straight after finishing her Masters of Science (MSc) in Ecology and Evolution at the University of Calgary, during which she studied the pollination ecology of aloes, a diverse genus of beautiful succulent plants in South Africa that rely on both birds and insects to reproduce. Anna is interested in the plant-animal interactions (such as pollination) that shape and hold together the world's ecosystems.

Before her MSc she completed a BSc at Trent University and spent several years working on ecological research projects, including the nesting ecology of shorebirds, snow geese and murres in the Canadian Arctic, life history traits of wrens in Costa Rica's cloud forest, sap-sucking insects in New Zealand's South Island, and lichen diversity in Ontario's hardwood forest canopies. Her work in the Centre for Conservation Research has mainly involved northern leopard frogs (Rana pipens), Vancouver Island marmot (Marmota vancouverensis) and mountain bluebird (Sialia currucoides) research. She's now focused on the 2008 Year of the Frog campaign and spearheading a project studying the toxicology of declining arctic shorebirds.

Theses

The Ecological Effects of Pollen-stealing Insects on Plant Reproductive Success. M.Sc. Thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary Alberta, May 2007.

The Pollination Ecology of Protea roupelliae (Proteaceae) on Mt. Gilboa , South Africa. Honours thesis, Trent University, Peterborough Ontario, April 2003.

Peer-reviewed Articles  

Hargreaves AL, Harder LD, Johnson SD. Consumptive emasculation: The ecological and evolutionary consequences of pollen theft. In review.

Hargreaves AL, Harder LD, Johnson SD. 2008. Aloe inconspicua: The first record of an exclusively insect-pollinated Aloe. In Press. South African Journal of Botany.

Bailey SF, Hargreaves AL, Hechtenthal SD, Laird RA, Latty TM, Reid TG, Teucher AC, Tindall JR. 2007. Empty flowers as a pollination-enhancement strategy. Evolutionary Ecology Research 9: 1-18.

Johnson SD, Hargreaves AL, Brown M. 2006. Dark, bitter-tasting nectar functions as a filter of flower visitors in a bird-pollinated plant. Ecology 87: 2709-2716.  

Hargreaves AL, Johnson SD, Nol E. 2004. Do floral syndromes predict specialization in plant pollination systems? An experimental test in an "ornithophilous" African Protea. Oecologia 140: 295-301.