Better not my cup of tea!
"Fancy" tea bags release billions of plastic particles when steeped in hot water. IQBI team member Hans Larsson is part of a collaborative study around Prof Natalie Tufenkij of McGill Chemical Engineering that quantifies plastic particles per cup of tea and looks into their effects on living organisms (Hernandez et al, 2019, Environmental Science & Technology). The IQBI x-ray microscope, one of only a handful in Canada, proved to be a valuable tool for the first ever visualization of the changes those plastic particles induce in living organism, in this case, water fleas. The picture to the right is taken from Hernandez et al. and illustrates the developmental abnormalities caused by plastic, at the same time demonstrating the power of XRM imaging.
Read more on tea bags and water fleas
Here come the Leaf-Cutters!
As the Montreal Insectarium is undergoing renovations, it's population of Leave-cutter ants found a new home in our controlled environment chambers under the tender care of Professor Ehab Abouheif and his students at the McGill Biology Department. Check out the Ant Story or listen to Prof Abouheif's interview with CBC News on the moving of the Leaf-cutters.
