Snails, squirrels and creepy crawlies: Over 1,000 species live on Dawson campus

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In the heart of Montreal’s downtown, snails and squirrels are showing up for school.

They are just two of the more than 1,000 different species Dawson College students have identified on their campus for a project called 1,000 Species in 1,000 Days.

For more than two years, staff and students have been logging the hundreds of different species they’ve spotted on campus.

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“We document everything. Fungus, plants, moss, lichen,” said Dawson biology teacher Brian Mader, who started and continues to lead the 1,000 species project.

Some species have caught the downtown students by surprise, like the eastern screech-owl or the spiky green caterpillar that transforms into the Cecropia moth, which is the largest in North America.

“It doesn’t even have a stomach. Its only goal is to literally mate and that’s it,” according to Jennifer de Vera, the program development director at Dawson’s Office of Sustainability. She says it was spotted by someone from Dawson’s print shop, after the Office of Sustainability made a concerted effort to attract the moth to campus.

Other sightings are more predictable, such as the eastern grey squirrel and the silver maple. The first documented species on the database was, naturally, humans: Homo sapiens.

Mader says the idea came a decade ago from students who wanted to create an online encyclopedia of species on campus like one from Harvard University. But the project picked up two years ago when Dawson joined the 1,000 species project, started by Vanier College when it launched the Campus Biodiversity Network. Dozens of Quebec universities, CEGEPS and high schools are part of that network. All use the online biodiversity tracker iNaturalist to identify and document species. Dawson is one of the few in an urbanized environment.

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“When I explain that to students, I find that they’re always surprised we have a thousand species here, downtown,” Mader said. “If you’re not in the core of downtown, it’d probably be easier. Especially if you’re in a forest. Like, for example, McGill’s (Macdonald) campus is beautiful … they also have the student body that is a bunch of naturalists. And their numbers are very, very impressive,” with more than 2,100 species observed to date. Compared to other downtown Montreal campuses, Dawson is in the lead: for instance, Université du Québec à Montréal has 156, and the CEGEP du Vieux Montréal has seven.

Mader said the project has three main purposes: “No. 1 is to teach people about the world around them. We learn what species are around us and learn how to identify the species around us. And then when we know what’s here, we can figure out the different ecosystem services that they provide for us.”

“For example, if we have, you know, four different species of bumblebee on campus, which we do, we know that we have good pollinating services for our vegetable garden.”

Those four bumblebee species are common eastern, brown-belted, red-belted and two-spotted.

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The second purpose is promoting sustainability on campus. Dawson students have taken the initiative to attract new species to campus by building habitats and green spaces.

“I would estimate without any gardens or any microhabitats, if it’s just grass, maybe 200 species,” Mader said. “Give them space and they will come.”

An artificial wetland, rooftop beehives, a butterfly dome and a pond are just some of the student projects that have drawn new species to campus, including Dawson’s resident American toad.

“When the sustainability office was installing a living roof on the fourth floor under our beehive … a toad hitchhiked with the plants. And Jen from the office found her, and she was all shrivelled up,” Mader said. The toad was then released into the newly built courtyard pond, where she still lives eight years later. “In nature, they live five to six years. So she’s definitely elderly.”

Promoting well-being on campus is another purpose of the project. Mader says the first species were counted in Dawson’s Peace Garden, which was built to help students heal after the traumatic 2006 shooting at the college that took the life of 18-year-old student Anastasia De Sousa and wounded 16 staff and faculty.

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“If you’re outside and you’re learning about the world around you, you’re not stuck in a classroom or sitting in an office with no windows. You’re experiencing the world around you. You’re connecting with the people around you,” Mader said.

Biodiversity is not just measured through the number of distinct species: The relative abundance of any given species is also important to document, according to de Vera and Mader.

During the early days of the project, the eastern grey squirrel was the most documented species on campus. Mader said he “worked very hard with my classes to try and kick that squirrel out of the No. 1 spot,” since he believed their cuteness and bold tendency to approach people skewed the data.

Now, the brown-lipped snail has taken the lead at 209 observations, compared to 126 for the eastern grey squirrel.

Dawson’s original goal was to count 1,000 species in 1,000 days. As of Day 744, they stand at 1,015, the most recent addition being a bird called the slate-coloured junco. Even though they’ve reached their goal, Mader said, there is “no way” they’ll stop. “I feel like there’s less pressure now, though.”

Mader’s advice to other schools hoping to follow in Dawson’s footsteps: “Just start counting.”

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