UAlberta leads national collaboration to fight mountain pine beetle epidemic

Research network gets funding boost from NSERC to create new knowledge and tools to protect Canadian forests. Janice Cooke leads TRIA-Net, a national research network that received $3 million from NSERC to further its work on stemming the devastating spread of the mountain pine beetle. (Photo: John Ulan) The federal government has given a University of Alberta-led research network of forest scientists and stakeholders a funding boost in hopes of turning the tables in its fight to protect Canadian forests from the spread of the mountain pine beetle. Janice Cooke, a researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences , received a $3-million Strategic Network Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to invest in her Turning Risk Into Action Network ( TRIA-Net ), an interdisciplinary team of scientists and forest practitioners from government, not-for-profit and industry organizations addressing the spread of the devastating forest insect. Building on the strengths of the Tria research consortium that began in 2007, the collaborative network will use a novel approach that integrates genomics, molecular analysis, population genetics, systematics, ecology, population dynamics and modelling to improve our understanding of how mountain pine beetles interact with their pine hosts and the fungal symbionts that the beetles carry, how environmental conditions affect these interactions and how the genetics of these organisms may influence mountain pine beetle spread.